Deployment

A Sarde site builds to plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so any static host can serve it. Pick your host below for step-by-step instructions.

GitHub Pages

Publish with GitHub Actions or push to a gh-pages branch.

Netlify

Build from Git, deploy with sarde deploy, or use the Netlify CLI.

Cloudflare Pages

Build from Git, deploy with sarde deploy, or use Wrangler.

Vercel

Build from Git, deploy with sarde deploy, or use the Vercel CLI.

Other hosts

Upload dist/ anywhere, or run your own command with sarde deploy.

Build for production

Every deployment method publishes the output of sarde build:

sarde build

→ The terminal prints a summary:

Built 9 pages in 320 ms
  Output: /path/to/my-site/dist

The dist/ directory contains the complete site: HTML pages, CSS, JavaScript, images, feeds, sitemap, and search index. Change the directory with --output or build.output in sarde.yaml.

Deployment methods

Each host page covers up to three methods:

Method	How it works	Use it when
Deploy from Git	The host clones your repository, installs Sarde, and builds on every push.	You want every push to `main` to publish automatically.
`sarde deploy`	Sarde uploads your local `dist/` to the host through its API. `--build` builds it first, in the same run.	You build on your own machine or in your own CI job.
Host CLI	The host's own tool (`netlify`, `wrangler`, `vercel`) uploads `dist/`.	You already use that tool, or `sarde deploy` does not support your setup.

Deploy tokens

sarde deploy reads API tokens from environment variables. Tokens never go in sarde.yaml, because that file is usually committed.

Provider	Token variable	Other settings
Netlify	`NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN`	`site_id`
Cloudflare Pages	`CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN`	`project_name`, `account_id` (or `CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID`)
Vercel	`VERCEL_TOKEN`	`project_id`, `team_id` for team projects (or `VERCEL_ORG_ID`)
GitHub Pages	None	Uses the git credentials already configured for the `origin` remote

In CI, store the token as a repository secret and expose it to the deploy step under the variable name above.

Check access before the first deploy

--check confirms that the configured site or project exists and that Sarde can reach it. It uploads nothing:

sarde deploy --check

→ The terminal prints:

Credentials OK: netlify can deploy to docs (https://docs.example.com)

On later deploys, Sarde uploads only the files the host does not already have, so a redeploy after a small change sends a few files, not the whole site.

See deploy in CLI Commands for all flags and the --format json event stream, and deploy in Configuration for all options.