Self-host your own Ascent

Ascent is free and open source. This guide walks you through deploying your own private copy on Vercel — it takes about 10 minutes and costs nothing. No coding required; you'll just click through a few sign-ups and paste in some keys.

0 What you'll need

• A GitHub account (free)
• A Vercel account (free — sign up with GitHub)
• A Strava account
• (Optional) A Supabase account if you want cloud caching of activities

1 Fork the repository

Open the repo and click Fork (top-right) to copy it into your own GitHub account:

Fork the repo on GitHub

2 Create a Strava API application

This gives your copy permission to read your Strava data through Strava's official login.

1. Go to strava.com/settings/api and create an application.
2. Fill in any name (e.g. "My Ascent"), category, and website.
3. For Authorization Callback Domain, enter localhost for now — you'll update it in Step 5 once you know your deploy URL.
4. After creating it, copy your Client ID and Client Secret — you'll paste them into Vercel next.

3 (Optional) Set up Supabase caching

Ascent works fine without this — activities are cached in your browser. Supabase only adds a shared cloud cache so you don't re-fetch when switching devices. To enable it:

1. Create a free project at supabase.com.
2. In Project Settings → API, copy the Project URL and the anon public key.

If you skip this step, just leave the two SUPABASE_* variables blank in the next step.

4 Deploy to Vercel

1. Go to vercel.com/new and import your forked repository.
2. Vercel auto-detects the build settings from vercel.json — leave them as-is.
3. Before deploying, open Environment Variables and add the following:

Click Deploy. After a minute you'll get a live URL like your-app.vercel.app.

5 Point Strava back to your URL

Return to strava.com/settings/api and set Authorization Callback Domain to your Vercel domain — just the host, no https:// and no path:

your-app.vercel.app

Save. That's it — open your URL, click Connect with Strava, and your dashboard is live. 🎉

6 (Optional) Run it locally

To develop or test on your own machine:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/Ascent-Strava-Dashboard.git
cd Ascent-Strava-Dashboard
npm install

# create .env.local with your keys:
#   STRAVA_CLIENT_ID=...
#   STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET=...
#   SUPABASE_URL=...
#   SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=...

node build.js     # generates the dist/ folder
npx vercel dev    # serves locally with the API routes

Add localhost to your Strava app's callback domain to test the login flow locally.

7 Troubleshooting

• "Bad Request" / login fails: your Strava Authorization Callback Domain doesn't match your deploy URL. It must be the bare host (no https://, no trailing slash).
• Stats don't load: double-check STRAVA_CLIENT_ID and STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET in Vercel → Settings → Environment Variables, then redeploy.
• Changed an env var? Trigger a fresh deploy in Vercel so the new value is picked up.

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