Deploy Toolkit, GitHub, Vercel and the CLIs

Arun Nagarathanam · 31 Aug 2026 · Toolkit · 30 of 59 in this course

An exclusive resource for students of Arun's Claude Code Course.

Create the first two before you start the deploy lecture. They take about two minutes total, both are free for personal projects, and neither asks for a credit card.

ToolWhat it does for youLink
GitHubHolds a copy of your project and its full history online, so it can be shared, backed up, and deployed. A dead laptop becomes an inconvenience rather than a disasterhttps://github.com
VercelTurns your code into a live URL. Your laptop is not a place the internet can visit, so Vercel lends you a computer that is always on and always reachablehttps://vercel.com
GitHub CLIGives your terminal a direct line to your GitHub account, which is what lets Claude create the repository and push for you instead of you clicking through the websitehttps://cli.github.com
Vercel CLIThe same idea for Vercel. Lets Claude link your folder to a project and run the deploy from the terminalhttps://vercel.com/docs/cli
Netlify and GitHub PagesThe alternatives, if you would rather host somewhere else. They work similarly and the concepts transferhttps://netlify.com and https://pages.github.com

You do not install either CLI by hand. Ask Claude, using the prompts in the deploy sequence, and it works out the right install for your system. On a Mac that is usually Homebrew, on Windows winget, inside WSL or Linux apt.

Git and GitHub are two different things

This pair confuses people more than any other, and one is not short for the other.

Git is the diary-keeper on your own machine. Every time you change anything, what changed gets written down, along with a line from you saying what you did. One of those saved moments is a commit.

GitHub is a website that holds a copy of that history online, so other people can reach it and so a dead drive is survivable.

You can use Git for years and never open GitHub once.

Commit and push are also two different things

A commit is a snapshot saved on your own machine. A push uploads your saved snapshots to GitHub.

Commit is saving locally. Push is sharing. You can commit ten times before you push once, and only the push reaches the internet.


See Where You Stand

This resource is one piece of a much bigger system.

Take the free Claude Code Readiness Quiz. It is 15 short situations, scored out of 100, and it tests how you handle a job rather than what you know about a tool, so you can take it without ever having opened Claude Code.

Take the Claude Code Readiness Quiz →

15 situations · Scored out of 100 · Free