Which labels do Vercel log entries get in Tares, and what should I do if project looks sparse?

Tares gives every Vercel log entry the labels project, environment, source, path, host, deployment and branch. The project label is the entity key, taken from the payload’s projectName, else projectId. If project reads sparse in Fields, pick a denser field as the key, or slice your view by source or environment.

How it works

The vercel connector is a push source. You point a Vercel log drain, in JSON format, at the source’s ingest URL, and Tares turns each log entry into one event. A single drain can carry several projects, and each project appears as its own entity.

These are the labels each entry gets:

• project: the key. Tares reads it from the payload’s projectName, and falls back to projectId when projectName is missing.
• environment: production or preview.
• source: lambda, build, edge, static, external or redirect.
• path: the request path.
• host: the host the request hit.
• deployment: the deployment the entry belongs to.
• branch: the branch the deployment was built from.

The connector has no settings of its own beyond labels. The project, environment and source labels are pre-filled when you add the source, so you only need to edit the label list if you want a different key. The full connector reference is on the Vercel logs connector page.

Set it up

Follow these steps to connect the drain and check how dense the project label is.

1. Make the ingest endpoint publicly reachable. Vercel delivers from its cloud, so use a deployed instance or a tunnel. A bare localhost daemon does not receive drains.
2. Create the source. You can ask a connected agent: “Use tares to create a vercel source and give me the ingest URL for the log drain.” Or open Sources, choose Add source, pick vercel and save. No config is required.
3. Copy the ingest URL from the source page. It has the form https://<host>/ingest/<ingest_key>.
4. If you prefer to declare the source yourself, use this definition:

- name: web-logs
  connector: vercel
  config:
    labels:
      - { name: project, field: project, primary: true }
      - { name: environment, field: environment }
      - { name: source, field: source }

5. In Vercel, open Team Settings, then Log Drains, then Add Log Drain. Set the endpoint to the ingest URL and the delivery format to JSON. Vercel verifies the endpoint with an x-vercel-verify header, and Tares echoes it back from Vercel’s verification request.
6. If Tares has auth on, add a custom header to the drain. It is an Authorization header with the Bearer scheme that holds an ingest-scoped API key. Without auth on, you do not need it.
7. Once traffic flows, open Recent events to see entries arriving. Then open Fields to see which projects appear and how much of your traffic each field covers.

If project reads sparse in Fields, you have two options:

• Pick a denser field as the key. In the source’s label list, mark a field that is present on more entries as the primary label instead of project.
• Slice by source or environment. Use the source label (lambda, build, edge, static, external, redirect) or the environment label (production, preview) to group and filter the same entries without changing the key.

What you get

• One event per Vercel log entry, with seven labels you can filter and group on.
• Separate entities for each project when one drain carries several.
• A Fields view that shows which projects appear and the coverage of each field, so you can see at a glance whether the key is dense enough.
• A way to recover from a sparse key: switch the primary label to a denser field, or slice by source and environment.
• Deployment, branch, host and path labels that let you narrow an investigation to one release or one route. See AI SRE for how labelled events feed investigations.

When something else fits

• If you only want to look at a single kind of traffic, such as production edge entries, you do not need a new key. Filter by environment and source on the existing project key.
• If your logs reach Tares by another route, such as OpenTelemetry, use the connector for that route instead. The vercel connector fits Vercel log drains.

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