ai-chatbot does not include instructions for DB migration on local deployments

[b8zhong]

Database Migration Missing in Localhost Setup

Description

The current README lacks a crucial step for database initialization, causing authentication failures on first setup when running locally.

A similar issue, but was closed without PR change to documentation: https://github.com/vercel/ai-chatbot/issues/450

Current Behavior

Database-related errors when trying to register/login:

Failed to get user from database
POST /register 200

Database migrations need to be run before the application can work properly.

pnpm tsx lib/db/migrate.ts && pnpm run build

[kulterryan]

Did you tried running db:migrate?

[ilses1]

I encountered the same problem, Failed to get user from database

[anurag923]

Hey everyone,

After completing the setup, I ran the application, and the sign-in page opened as expected. However, when I try to create a new account, I get an error saying, "Failed to create an account." Any ideas on what might be causing this?

[tobiasbueschel]

Hi all 👋 there are already 3 existing PRs that are addressing this issue:

• https://github.com/vercel/ai-chatbot/pull/855
• https://github.com/vercel/ai-chatbot/pull/830
• https://github.com/vercel/ai-chatbot/pull/732

@jeremyphilemon any chance we could get one of these PRs merged so that we can close this issue and make it easier for everyone to spin up the project locally?

Cheers

[vidhant]

+1 to prioritizing this — without clear migration instructions, most users will hit errors out of the box and give up before trying the chatbot. A quick note about running ts-node migrate.ts (or npm run migrate) would go a long way.

[pavinduLakshan]

Disappointing to see this is still not addressed.

ps: Thanks @b8zhong for the details

[techpeace]

The setup docs list setting DATABASE_URL:

Create a PostgreSQL database and retrieve its connection string to set the DATABASE_URL environment variable in .env.local

The actual ENV variable is POSTGRES_URL:

> npx tsx lib/db/migrate.ts

❌ Migration failed
Error: POSTGRES_URL is not defined
    at runMigrate (agent-spike/lib/db/migrate.ts:12:11)
    at postgres (agent-spike/lib/db/migrate.ts:28:1)
    at Object.<anonymous> (agent-spike/lib/db/migrate.ts:32:2)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1723:14)
    at Object.transformer (agent-spike/node_modules/.pnpm/[email protected]/node_modules/tsx/dist/register-DCnOAxY2.cjs:2:1186)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1458:32)
    at Function._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1275:12)
    at TracingChannel.traceSync (node:diagnostics_channel:322:14)
    at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:234:24)
    at cjsLoader (node:internal/modules/esm/translators:311:5)
 ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 1.

[maver1ck]

@dancer Why this is closed as not planned ? Do you think you need to spend hours for searching github issues to simply deploy this template locally ?