Deployment

This guide condenses the steps from DEPLOYMENT_GUIDE.md into a quick reference. For full step-by-step instructions, see that file.

Topology

You'll deploy four services to three providers:

Service	Provider	Plan	URL
ML service	Render	Starter	rink-ml.onrender.com
API gateway	Vercel	Hobby/Pro	api.rinkglobal.com
Frontend (SPA)	Vercel	Hobby/Pro	rinkglobal.com
Documentation	Vercel	Hobby/Pro	docs.rinkglobal.com

Plus:

• Supabase (free) for auth.
• Groq (pay-per-use) for the AI assistant.

Order of operations

1. Render — deploy the ML service first. Note the URL.
2. Vercel rink-api — deploy the gateway with ML_API_URL pointing at the Render URL.
3. Vercel rink-web — deploy the SPA with VITE_API_BASE_URL pointing at the gateway.
4. Vercel rink-docs — deploy the docs site (this page is hosted there!).
5. DNS — point all subdomains at their respective Vercel projects.

Environment variable matrix

Render → rink-ml

Variable	Value
RINK_DATA_DIR	/var/data (set by render.yaml)
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	https://rinkglobal.com,https://www.rinkglobal.com
PYTHON_VERSION	3.11.9 (set by render.yaml)
GATEWAY_SECRET	(recommended) a long random string

Vercel → rink-api

Variable	Value
ML_API_URL	https://rink-ml.onrender.com
GROQ_API_KEY	a fresh key from console.groq.com
GROQ_MODEL	llama-3.3-70b-versatile (default)
SUPABASE_URL	https://YOUR-REF.supabase.co
SUPABASE_ANON_KEY	the anon key from Supabase dashboard
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	https://rinkglobal.com,https://www.rinkglobal.com
GATEWAY_SECRET	the same value as on Render

Vercel → rink-web

Variable	Value
VITE_API_BASE_URL	https://api.rinkglobal.com
VITE_SUPABASE_URL	https://YOUR-REF.supabase.co
VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY	the anon key from Supabase dashboard

Vercel → rink-docs

No env vars required — pure static site.

Vercel project settings

Project	Root directory	Framework preset
rink-api	/	Other
rink-web	/client	Vite
rink-docs	/docs	Other

DNS records

For each subdomain, Vercel will display the exact record to add. As a guideline:

Subdomain	Type	Value
rinkglobal.com	A	76.76.21.21
www.rinkglobal.com	CNAME	cname.vercel-dns.com
api.rinkglobal.com	CNAME	cname.vercel-dns.com
docs.rinkglobal.com	CNAME	cname.vercel-dns.com

Cloudflare-fronted domains: set the proxy status to DNS Only (gray cloud), not proxied — Vercel needs to handle TLS itself.

Smoke-test commands

After deploy:

# Health
curl https://api.rinkglobal.com/api/health

# Frontend
open https://rinkglobal.com

# Docs
open https://docs.rinkglobal.com

For a more thorough check, run the included script:

git clone https://github.com/rinkglobal/rink-saas-v3-ml
cd rink-saas-v3-ml
cp server/.env.example server/.env  # fill in real values
API_BASE=https://api.rinkglobal.com node scripts/check-deploy.js

It exercises every gateway route (auth gates, Groq, ML proxy, CORS) and reports pass/fail for each.

Free-tier alternative

To run everything for $0/month while in beta, set Render to plan: free in ml_api/render.yaml. Trade-offs:

• Cold starts (~30 s after 15 min idle).
• No persistent disk — uploaded CSVs and trained models are lost on every spin-down.

The user-facing impact is that someone returning after a long idle period will need to re-upload their CSV. Acceptable for beta; not for production.

Cost summary

Item	Cost
Render Starter (1 service)	$7 / month
Render persistent disk (1 GB)	~$0.25 / month
Vercel Hobby (3 projects)	$0
Supabase Free	$0
Groq API	usage-based, ~$0.10 / 1k requests at LLama-3.3-70B
Domain	~$15 / year (rinkglobal.com)

Total for low beta volume: ~$8 / month + variable Groq costs.