From multi-step releases to single pull requests

Supabase, the open-source Firebase alternative, relies on Next.js and Vercel for its documentation, marketing site, and dashboard. As the company has grown to a 60-person development team serving thousands of users, the friction in their workflow became increasingly apparent — particularly around UI changes.

Before the team adopted Turborepo, updating even a single class name on a component demanded a detour through the npm ecosystem: edit the code, cut an npm release, pull that package back into the main repository, and only then deploy. A trivial change carried real overhead and added delay for every developer touching the UI.

Moving to a monorepo with Turborepo collapsed that entire pipeline. The same change is now one edit in one place, shipped through one pull request. That simplicity extends to the whole stack: Tailwind, TypeScript, and linting configurations are centralized and "just work" across the repo without anyone needing to manage them by hand, according to frontend developer Terry Sutton.

The effect is felt both inside the team and beyond it. The full Supabase system boots locally from a single terminal command, and community contributors outside the core organization can now submit meaningful code that goes straight to production. What previously kept external collaboration at arm's length is now a low-friction path from idea to deployment.

Collaboration without proximity

Supabase's developers pair the monorepo setup with Vercel Preview Deployments to keep stakeholders in the loop. Distributing live links with commenting built in lets a geographically spread team of 60 gather feedback and iterate without forcing anyone into a synchronous review cycle.

During peak seasons the company deploys hundreds of times a day. Frontend developer Jonathan Summers-Muir credits the combination of Vercel and Next.js for keeping that pace sustainable: "You can just open a PR, merge, and it's live."

Next on the team's roadmap is exploring more Turborepo features, including Remote Caching on Vercel and further build-time optimizations.