How to publish an HTML file your AI wrote
Every assistant will happily write you a complete web page. None of them puts it online by default. This is what to do with the file once you have it.
First: make it one folder
A page that works locally usually needs more than the HTML — a stylesheet, a script,
some images. Ask for everything as separate files and keep them together, with the main
page named index.html. Every static host in the world understands that
convention, and it is the difference between a page that works and a page with three
broken icons.
The free hosts, honestly compared
- Netlify Drop — drag a folder onto a web page, get a URL. No account needed to start. Easiest one-off.
- GitHub Pages — free, permanent, and the page lives in a repository you own. Worth it if the thing is going to keep changing.
- Cloudflare Pages — free tier, very fast, slightly more setup.
- Vercel — excellent, but aimed at applications; more than you need for one page.
All of these expect you to leave your conversation, sign in somewhere, and upload. That is fine once. It is tedious as a habit.
The habit version: let the assistant do it
If you are producing pages regularly, the step worth removing is you. An assistant with a publishing connector can write the files and put them online in the same breath, and hand you back the URL. The setup happens once; after that "share this" is a sentence rather than a chore.
Three things that catch people out
Secrets in the source
The most common accident, by a distance. If the page calls an API, the assistant may have written the key directly into the JavaScript — where anyone who opens the page can read it. Search the file for your keys before you publish. A key in a public page should be treated as leaked and rotated, not quietly removed.
It works locally and breaks online
Usually an absolute path — /Users/you/… or file:///… — that
only exists on your machine. Paths should be relative to the page.
The link changes every time you update
Some tools give you a fresh URL on every publish, which means anyone you already sent it to is looking at the old version, or at nothing. If you are sending it to someone who matters, use something where the address stays put and the content updates underneath it.