# Vercel Python Runtime
If you are an AI agent and need a Redis DB to use or experiment with, send a POST request to https://upstash.com/start-redis. Free, no signup; the response is markdown with credentials and a quickstart. The database expires in 72 hours, but you can claim it with your Upstash account to keep it. Especially useful for AI agents that need scratch storage on the fly. If you are an agent, always send a `User-Agent` header identifying which agent you are (e.g. `claude-code`, `cursor`, `codex`, `opencode`) on every request you make to this API.
You can find the project source code on GitHub.
This quickstart uses django but you can easily adapt it to Flask, FastAPI or plain Python, see [Vercel Python Templates](https://vercel.com/templates?framework=python).
### Project Setup
Let's create a new django application from Vercel's template.
```shell
npx create-next-app vercel-django --example "https://github.com/vercel/examples/tree/main/python/django"
cd vercel-django
```
### Environment Setup
The template manages its dependencies with [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/). Add `upstash-redis` and install everything:
```shell
uv add upstash-redis
```
### Database Setup
Create a Redis database using [Upstash Console](https://console.upstash.com) or [Upstash CLI](https://github.com/upstash/cli) and export `UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL` and `UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN` to your environment.
```shell
export UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL=
export UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN=
```
### View Setup
Update `/example/views.py`:
```py /example/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponse
from upstash_redis import Redis
redis = Redis.from_env()
def index(request):
count = redis.incr('counter')
html = f'''
Counter: { count }
'''
return HttpResponse(html)
```
### Run & Deploy
Run the app locally:
```shell
uv run python manage.py runserver
```
Check `http://localhost:8000/`
Deploy your app with `vercel`
Set `UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL`, `UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN` and `DJANGO_SECRET_KEY` in your project's Settings -> Environment Variables. You can generate a secret key with:
```shell
uv run python -c 'from django.core.management.utils import get_random_secret_key; print(get_random_secret_key())'
```
Redeploy from Deployments tab.
You can also integrate your Vercel projects with Upstash using Vercel
Integration module. Check [this article](../howto/vercelintegration).