From localhost to a $5 VPS in one command

Deployment usually means an afternoon of clicking through dashboards, pasting secrets into text boxes, and discovering that staging and prod disagree about everything.

Boring keeps two files:

.env.local   # prefilled, gitignored, loads automatically
.env.prod    # prod values, gitignored, scp'd to the server once

Local: just run it

.env.local ships prefilled — SQLite, test-mode billing, localhost URLs. The only empty lines are OAuth and provider keys, which you don't need until you do:

npm run dev
# → http://localhost:3000, database in ./db/app.db

Prod: source and start

Next.js doesn't auto-load .env.prod, so the scripts do it for you:

npm run build:prod   # loads .env.prod, then next build
npm run start:prod   # loads .env.prod, then next start

Shell variables beat .env.local every time, so prod values always win — even if both files exist on the box.

The checklist that remains

1. Point DNS at the box, set NEXTAUTH_URL to the real domain.
2. Generate a real NEXTAUTH_SECRET (openssl rand -base64 32).
3. Create the billing product (Stripe price, Dodo product, or LS variant) and paste the ID.
4. Paste the provider webhook secret, point the webhook URL at /api/webhook/<rail>.
5. Run schema.sql once if you chose Supabase.

That's the whole list. The boring kind of list — short, complete, and the same every time.