OpenBrain — Vercel Deployment Guide

OpenBrain is a multi-engine AI chat platform supporting GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, Gemini 2.0, and Perplexity — all through a single interface with Midnight Glass dark aesthetic.

---

Prerequisites

• Vercel account (free tier works)
• Clerk account (free tier — for authentication)
• OpenRouter account (for AI engines)
• Neon account (free PostgreSQL database)

---

Step 1 — Set up the Database (Neon)

1. Create a free database at neon.tech
2. Copy the connection string (it looks like postgresql://...)
3. You'll use it as DATABASE_URL in Step 4

---

Step 2 — Set up Clerk Authentication

1. Create an app at dashboard.clerk.com
2. Go to API Keys and copy:
   • Publishable key → VITE_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY and CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
   • Secret key → CLERK_SECRET_KEY
3. In Clerk dashboard → Domains, add your Vercel deployment URL

---

Step 3 — Get OpenRouter API Key

1. Go to openrouter.ai/keys
2. Create a new key and copy it → OPENROUTER_API_KEY

---

Step 4 — Deploy to Vercel

Option A: Via Vercel CLI (recommended)

# Install Vercel CLI
npm install -g vercel

# Deploy from this folder
cd vercel-deploy
npm install
vercel

# Set environment variables
vercel env add CLERK_SECRET_KEY
vercel env add CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
vercel env add VITE_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
vercel env add OPENROUTER_API_KEY
vercel env add DATABASE_URL

# Deploy to production
vercel --prod

Option B: Via GitHub + Vercel Dashboard

1. Push this vercel-deploy/ folder contents to a new GitHub repository
2. Go to vercel.com/new and import the repo
3. In Environment Variables, add all 5 variables from .env.example
4. Click Deploy

---

Step 5 — Initialize the Database

After deploying, run the database migration once:

DATABASE_URL="your-connection-string" npm run db:push

Or in Vercel dashboard → Functions → run:

npx drizzle-kit push

---

Environment Variables Summary

Variable	Description
CLERK_SECRET_KEY	Clerk secret key (sk_live_...)
CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY	Clerk publishable key (pk_live_...)
VITE_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY	Same as CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY (for Vite build)
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	OpenRouter API key (sk-or-v1-...)
DATABASE_URL	PostgreSQL connection string

---

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4, Framer Motion
• Backend: Express.js as Vercel Serverless Function
• Auth: Clerk (OpenID Connect)
• Database: PostgreSQL via Drizzle ORM + Neon serverless driver
• AI: OpenRouter API (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, Gemini 2.0, Perplexity)