Issue Summary
My builds complete successfully but deployments immediately fail with contradictory Node.js version validation errors. The error messages keep changing and asking for versions that aren’t available in the dashboard.
Project Details
- Project: meal-mate-app
- GitHub Repo: Austine96/MealMate
- Framework: Vite + React + TypeScript
- Latest Deployment: a822782
What’s Happening
Every deployment follows this pattern:
Build completes successfully->
1568 modules transformed.
✓ built in 4.82s
2. 
Immediately fails with Node.js version error
Error: Found invalid Node.js Version: “X” Please set “engines”: { “node”: “Y” } in your package.json
## The Contradictory Errors
The error messages keep contradicting each other:
**First deployment:**
- Set Node to 18.x → Error: "18.x is discontinued, use 22.x"
**Second deployment:**
- Set Node to 22.x → Error: "22.x is invalid, use 18.x"
**Third deployment:**
- Set Node to 20.x → Error: "20.x is invalid, use 18.x"
**Problem:** Dashboard only offers 20.x and 22.x (NOT 18.x!)
## What I've Tried
✅ **Removed all Node.js specifications:**
- Deleted `.nvmrc` file
- Removed `engines` field from `package.json`
- Result: Still fails
✅ **Set Node.js in Dashboard Settings:**
- Settings → General → Node.js Version
- Tried 20.x: Failed
- Tried 22.x: Failed
✅ **Cleared build cache:**
- Used "Redeploy without cache" multiple times
- Logs confirm: "Skipping build cache since Node.js version changed"
✅ **Matched code and dashboard:**
- Set both `package.json` and dashboard to 20.x
- Set both to 22.x
- Result: Both combinations fail
## Build Logs Evidence
Every deployment shows successful build followed by validation error:
20:14:07.782 vite v5.4.8 building for production… 20:14:12.781 ✓ built in 4.97s 20:14:12.844 Error: Found invalid Node.js Version: “22.x”
The build works perfectly - validation is broken.
The Core Issue
This appears to be a bug in Vercel’s post-build validation system:
- Builds succeed (proven by logs)
- Validation fails with incorrect error messages
- Error asks for Node 18.x which is deprecated and unavailable
- Dashboard only offers 20.x and 22.x
- No combination of settings works
What I Need
- Explanation of why validation asks for 18.x when it’s not available
- How to bypass this broken validation
- Fix for the contradictory error messages
- Successful deployment of my working app
Additional Context
- App works perfectly locally (
npm run buildsucceeds) - Same codebase deployed successfully on other platforms
- This started happening recently (possibly after a Vercel platform update?)
- Multiple redeployments over 2 days - all fail the same way
Question
Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround to bypass Node.js validation or force deployment to complete?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! The app is ready to go live but blocked by this validation issue.
