Hello Vercel team,

I'm preparing the first deployment of an existing Vercel project and would appreciate clarification about how the deployment API handles project settings.

My situation:

• The Vercel project already exists but has zero deployments.
• Its Next.js project settings are already configured in the dashboard, including the framework, custom build command and other settings.
• I want to initialize the project with a minimal static deployment using the Build Output API v3 and Vercel CLI 65.2.0 (--prebuilt).
• The first deployment will be classified as Production. After this initialization, I intend to deploy the actual Next.js application to Preview.
• My goal is to preserve all existing project-level settings without accidental changes.

I've already inspected the CLI's client-side deployment payload and tested its construction locally. However, I couldn't establish the exact server-side persistence behavior.

My questions:

1. For an existing, preconfigured project with no deployments, can the first deployment overwrite its saved project settings?
2. If projectSettings is omitted from the deployment request, are the existing settings preserved?
3. If projectSettings is provided, how does the server handle individual fields that are omitted, null, or empty strings? In particular: framework, buildCommand, installCommand, rootDirectory, outputDirectory, and nodeVersion.
4. Can deploying a static prebuilt output change the project's framework from Next.js to Other, or alter its configured build settings?
5. What is the officially supported, safest way to perform this first static deployment while guaranteeing that the existing project configuration remains unchanged?

I'm specifically looking for the server-side behavior, not just the payload generated by the CLI.

I haven't executed any deployment yet because I'd like to clarify this behavior first.

Thank you for your help!