Summary: When a deployment is blocked by commit-author verification, it sits in UNKNOWN indefinitely with no build logs, no dashboard error, and no CLI output. The only signal is an email that can arrive hours later. Failing fast with the actual reason would turn a multi-hour mystery into a 2-minute fix.
What happened: On the Hobby plan, deploying a project via vercel --prod where the commit author email was not yet a verified email on my GitHub account, every production deploy went to status UNKNOWN (duration ?) and never built — for ~13 hours across many redeploys.
Current behavior:
- vercel ls shows only UNKNOWN
- vercel inspect --logs returns no logs, just status UNKNOWN
- No error anywhere in the dashboard or CLI in real time
- The actual reason ("the commit email could not be matched to a GitHub account") only arrived later, by email
Because the deploy is blocked before the build starts, there are no build logs — understandable — but nothing surfaces the block itself.
Desired behavior:
- Surface the block reason immediately and prominently in the dashboard, the CLI, and vercel inspect --logs
- Fail the deploy fast with the actual message ("commit email X isn't a verified GitHub account — verify it at github.com/settings/emails "), instead of an indefinite silent UNKNOWN
Why it matters: With no actionable signal anywhere in the product, I spent ~13 hours debugging blind and ultimately migrated the site to another host. Surfacing the real error up front would have made it a 2-minute fix.