Publish Site

Publish Site

Take a website, dashboard, or web app the user built (or you built for them) and put it online on infrastructure the user owns — GitHub Pages by default, Cloudflare Pages or Netlify when they need more. The discipline: preview locally for sign-off, version every deploy with a git tag, deploy through a provider ladder, verify the live URL with a real HTTP check, and keep rollback one command away.

This skill covers static sites and SPA build output (plain HTML/CSS/JS, or the dist//build/ folder from Vite/Next-export/Astro/etc.). It does not cover server-side runtimes — for throwaway serverless deploys with zero account setup, use the cloudflare-temporary-deploy optional skill instead.

When to Use

Load this skill when the user asks to:

• Put a site online — "publish this", "host this somewhere", "give me a link I can share"
• Deploy a dashboard, report, portfolio, docs site, or prototype you just generated
• Update an already-published site with new content (redeploy = new version)
• Roll back a bad deploy to the previous version
• Pick a host — they don't care where, they just want a URL

Prerequisites

At least ONE authenticated provider CLI (check in this order):

• GitHub Pages (default): gh auth status succeeds. Needs git too.
• Cloudflare Pages: wrangler whoami succeeds (or CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN is set). Install: npm i -g wrangler or use npx wrangler@latest.
• Netlify (fallback): netlify status succeeds. Install: npm i -g netlify-cli.

Plus:

• A directory of static output to publish (site root or a dist//build/ folder). If the project needs a build step, run it first and publish the output directory, never the source.
• For local preview sharing: cloudflared (optional — python3 -m http.server covers local-only preview).

How to Run

All commands below run via the terminal tool from the site's project directory. The pipeline is always the same five moves:

1. Build → 2. Preview for sign-off → 3. Commit + tag (version-before-deploy) → 4. Deploy via the provider ladder → 5. Verify the live URL with curl and report it.

Quick Reference

Procedure

1. Build and preview locally

Build if needed (npm run build, etc.) and identify the output directory. Serve it:

python3 -m http.server 8080 --directory dist

For a shareable preview link (user on another machine, or you want their sign-off before going live), open a quick tunnel in a background terminal session:

cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:8080

Give the user the https://*.trycloudflare.com URL and get sign-off before deploying. Kill the tunnel afterwards.

2. Version before deploy — no exceptions

Every deploy must come from a git commit, so every deploy is reproducible and rollback is trivial.

git init 2>/dev/null; git add -A
git commit -m "deploy: <short description>"
git tag "deploy-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M)"

If the project already has a repo, just commit + tag. Never deploy uncommitted files.

3. Deploy — provider ladder

Rung 1 — GitHub Pages (default: free, zero extra accounts if gh is authed):

gh repo create <name> --public --source . --push   # skip if repo exists
git subtree push --prefix dist origin gh-pages      # publish build output
gh api "repos/{owner}/<name>/pages" -X POST \
  -f 'source[branch]=gh-pages' -f 'source[path]=/'  # first time only

Site appears at https://<owner>.github.io/<name>/. If the site is the repo root (no build dir), push main and set Pages source to main instead of using subtree. For build-step projects that will redeploy often, prefer the official actions/deploy-pages workflow so pushes auto-publish.

Rung 2 — Cloudflare Pages (when the user wants a custom domain, redirects/headers, or Functions):

npx wrangler@latest pages deploy dist --project-name <name>

First run creates the project and prints the https://<name>.pages.dev URL. Custom domains attach via the Cloudflare dashboard (Pages → project → Custom domains).

Rung 3 — Netlify (fallback, or when the user already lives there):

netlify deploy --prod --dir dist

netlify deploy --dir dist (no --prod) gives a draft URL — useful as a second preview stage.