Deploy-ready: fully static app, client-side debate engine, zero backend needed

[emregucerr]

Summary

Makes the entire app fully static so it can be deployed for free on Vercel (or any static host) with zero backend, zero serverless functions, and zero timeout issues.

The Problem

The original /api/debate route ran the entire debate as a server-side function. A full debate makes 38 sequential/parallel LLM API calls to OpenRouter, taking 1-3 minutes. Vercel's free tier has a 60-second serverless function timeout — debates would frequently fail mid-way.

The Solution

Move the debate orchestration entirely to the client. The API key was already user-provided and stored in localStorage, so there's no security reason to proxy through a server. OpenRouter supports CORS and is designed for direct browser calls.

What Changed

New: src/lib/debate-engine.ts — Client-side debate engine

• Identical debate logic (phases, prompts, scoring) extracted into a standalone module
• Calls OpenRouter directly from the browser via fetch()
• No timeout limits — debates run as long as they need
• Abort support via AbortSignal
• Typed event callbacks for real-time UI updates

Modified: src/app/arena/page.tsx

• Imports and calls runDebate() from the client-side engine
• Removed SSE stream parsing (no longer needed — events come via direct callbacks)
• Cleaner type-safe score rendering (proper DebateScore type instead of Record<string, unknown>)

Deleted: src/app/api/debate/route.ts

• The 570-line serverless API route is no longer needed

Build Output (Before → After)

Before:                          After:
┌ ○ /                            ┌ ○ /
├ ○ /_not-found                  ├ ○ /_not-found
├ ƒ /api/debate    ← DYNAMIC    ├ ○ /arena         ← NOW STATIC
├ ○ /arena                       ├ ● /debate/[id]
├ ● /debate/[id]                 └ ● /model/[id]
└ ● /model/[id]

All routes are now ○ (Static) or ● (SSG). Zero serverless functions.

Lint & Build

• npm run lint — 0 errors, 0 warnings
• npm run build — all 15 pages generate successfully

Also fixed (from first commit)

• react-hooks/immutability error in DebateReplay.tsx
• 9 unused import/variable warnings across 5 files

  

[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 1 potential issue.

^{❌ Bugbot Autofix is OFF. To automatically fix reported issues with cloud agents, enable autofix in the Cursor dashboard.}

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit c56bf4e. Configure here.}

[cursor]

Retry sleep holds semaphores, blocking all concurrency

Medium Severity

All four asyncio.sleep(delay) calls during retry backoff (lines 133, 143, 171, 181) execute inside the async with global_sem and async with model_sem context managers. This means during exponential backoff (up to 32 seconds), both semaphore slots are held, blocking other concurrent requests from proceeding. With only 10 global slots and 2 per-model slots, a single rate-limited request can starve the entire benchmark's concurrency for the duration of the sleep.

 

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit c56bf4e. Configure here.}