🐞 Bug Report: Stale Environment Variables in vercel dev

Discussions
1

:lady_beetle: Bug Report: Stale Environment Variables in vercel dev

Summary
When removing and re-adding environment variables via the Vercel dashboard or CLI, vercel dev continues to load old values (stale keys) that no longer exist in the project settings. This can persist for >24h, even after multiple redeploys, and causes apps to fail locally with outdated secrets.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Create a new env var (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY) in Vercel dashboard or via CLI.

  2. Run vercel env pull .env.local → .env.local gets correct value.

  3. Remove the variable in dashboard/CLI (vercel env rm OPENAI_API_KEY).

  4. Add a new value with the same key (vercel env add OPENAI_API_KEY).

  5. Run vercel dev.

    • :cross_mark: Problem: the app loads the old value of OPENAI_API_KEY, not the updated one.

    • Verified by logging prefix/suffix of the key → still using deleted key.

    • Even after hours, caches, restarts → still stale.

Expected behavior
vercel dev should always use the current environment values as shown by vercel env ls and vercel env pull.

Actual behavior

  • vercel env ls shows the correct, updated key.

  • .env.local contains the correct, updated key.

  • But vercel dev resolves to a different/older value (previously deleted key).

  • Seems like some internal cache is serving stale env vars to the local builder runtime.

Workaround

  • Manually delete .vercel/ folder and re-link project (vercel dev).

  • Or nuke env var completely, re-add with a different name, then vercel env pull.

  • Only then does vercel dev stop using stale value.

Environment

  • Vercel CLI: 48.1.4

  • OS: Windows 11 (Dev Mode enabled for symlinks)

  • Project type: Node/ESM

  • Happened consistently when rotating API keys (OpenAI).

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Suggested fix: ensure vercel dev doesn’t pull stale env vars from cached builders or registry. It should respect the values from vercel env pull or dashboard.