Environment variables saved as empty strings via Dashboard and CLI

Help
1

I’m experiencing a bug where environment variables are being saved as empty strings, regardless of the method I use to add them. This affects two projects under my account:

  • miss-ai-assistant-v2

  • miss-ai-assistant

What’s happening:

  • I add an environment variable with a value (e.g., ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID, TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN)

  • The UI/CLI confirms the variable was added successfully

  • When I check the stored value, it’s an empty string ""

Methods I’ve tried (all produce empty values):

  1. Adding via the Vercel Dashboard form

  2. Adding via CLI with --value flag

  3. Adding via CLI with stdin pipe:



echo "test123" | vercel env add TEST_VAR production --yes

Verification:



vercel env pull .env.test --environment=production

grep TEST_VAR .env.test

# Returns: TEST_VAR=""

Environment:

  • Multiple variables affected across both projects

  • Issue persists across production environment

  • Tried removing and re-adding variables multiple times

This appears to be an account-level issue since it affects both of my projects. Requesting investigation from the Vercel team.

2

Hi,

Since this happens in both the Dashboard and CLI, and across multiple projects, it does sound more like an account/project-level issue than a normal env-var typo.

One quick thing I would test is whether the issue happens with a completely new variable name and a simple non-secret value, for example:

TEST_PLAIN_VALUE=hello123

Then pull it back with:

vercel env pull .env.test --environment=production

If even that comes back as TEST_PLAIN_VALUE="", that is useful evidence that the value is being lost after save, not just hidden/redacted in the UI.

I would include these details for Vercel staff:

  • Vercel CLI version

  • Whether it happens in Preview/Development too, or only Production

  • Whether it happens in a brand-new test project

  • The exact command used to add the variable

  • The pulled .env result, with real secrets removed

Since you already tested both Dashboard and CLI, this may need Vercel staff to inspect the project/account state.