Hi, XGD! Welcome to the Vercel Community.

Let me try and help out here!

The system environment variables you're referring to, like VERCEL_GIT_REPO_OWNER, are automatically populated by Vercel during deployments . However, these variables are not automatically available when running vercel dev locally. This is because your local development environment doesn't have the same context as a Vercel deployment. In summary:

1. System environment variables are primarily intended for use in deployed environments
2. When running vercel dev, you're in a local development environment, which doesn't have access to the same deployment context
3. Adding these variables to .env.local doesn't work because they are system-provided variables, not user-defined ones

You could solve this by using a fallback value in your code:

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const REPO_OWNER = process.env.VERCEL_GIT_REPO_OWNER || "default_value";

Replace "default_value" with an appropriate default for your local development.

Or if you need specific values for local development, add them to your .env.local file:

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VERCEL_GIT_REPO_OWNER=your_local_value

This will be used during vercel dev but won't interfere with the system-provided value during actual Vercel deployments.

Let us know how you get on!