Deploying safely on Vercel without merge queues

The text discusses the challenges of using merge queues in repositories with multiple developers contributing code, such as monorepos. Merge queues can slow down productivity by forcing commits from each developer to be tested before merge in serial, even from unrelated commits. This results in repeated work and long merge times. The author suggests an alternative approach using Vercel's custom checks feature to ensure the safety of production deployments without using a merge queue. By disabling automatic promotion of production deployments on Vercel, developers can run additional CI checks on the production deployment and promote it after those checks complete. This allows for faster and safer code merging in repositories with multiple contributors.