We are trying to create the first deployment of an existing new Vercel project strictly in Preview. Our release policy does not permit a Production bootstrap, including a temporary static placeholder.

Reproduction:

1. A Hobby project with no successful prior deployment, no Git integration and no custom environment.
2. Application variables configured only for Preview; zero Production environment-variable records.
3. Run vercel deploy --target preview --yes from a non-production local branch. No --prod flag.
4. The returned deployment is immediately classified as target: production.
5. The application guard refuses the unexpected environment and the build stops. No usable application deployment results.

Local CLI was 55.0.0 on Node 22.22.3; the remote build log reported CLI 65.1.0. We have not weakened the guard, copied Preview secrets to Production, deployed a placeholder, attached domains or retried with Production credentials.

We found issue 17069 and merged PR 17206, which describe the first-deployment classification behavior. The private support assistant offered a case form, but the actual Hobby form gates CI/CD technical support.

Is there now a supported API, CLI or project setting that creates the first deployment as Preview without any successful Production deployment? If not, could Vercel confirm the limitation and whether a Preview-only path can be enabled?

We can provide redacted correlation identifiers privately through an official Vercel channel if required. Please do not request credentials or suggest bypassing the application's environment guard.