harvis
Hugo

Deploy your Hugo app

Hugo builds a full site in well under a second and writes it to public — there's genuinely not much more to say. It was static-first before that was the default expectation.

steps
  1. 01

    Build the site

    Run "hugo" from your project root. It compiles every content file and template into static HTML, CSS, and JS in a "public" folder — usually in well under a second.

  2. 02

    Set the right base URL

    Hugo bakes "baseURL" from hugo.toml into every generated link. Set it to your harvis.page address before building, or links to other pages on the site will point at the wrong place.

  3. 03

    Deploy it

    Run "npx harvis deploy public" from your project root. No config and no login for this first deploy — you get a live URL immediately, plus a private claim link to attach the site to a free account whenever you're ready.

Deploy Hugo with one command

Build your project, then hand the output folder to harvis. No account needed for the first deploy — you'll get a live link and a private claim link to manage it later.

terminal
hugo
npx harvis deploy public

Prefer dragging files instead of a terminal? Build the project, then drop the output folder here and publish it the same way.

git hook

Deploy Hugo on every git push

The command above is one you will run again after every change. A git hook runs it for you: this one already points at public, the folder Hugo builds into.

The folder holding the finished site. "." is the repo root, which is right for hand-written HTML; a static-site generator writes somewhere else.

pre-push fires on every branch and every remote, so a feature branch would publish over your live site. With this on, a push from anywhere else exits early and goes through untouched.

in your repo root
cat > .git/hooks/pre-push <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
set -e
hugo
harvis deploy public
EOF
chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-push

The options, the gotchas and how to share a hook with your team are on the git hook page.

Hugo deploy questions

I changed baseURL after already deploying. Do I need to redeploy?

Yes — baseURL is compiled into the HTML at build time, not read at request time. Update "hugo.toml", rebuild, and run "npx harvis deploy public" again; it updates the same site.

Does Hugo's pagination and taxonomy pages (tags, categories) work?

Yes — they're all generated as static HTML files at build time like every other Hugo page, so they deploy and serve exactly the same way.

Is deploying a Hugo app to harvis actually free?

Yes, no card required. Free limits are 500 files and 50 MB per site, which covers a static Hugo build with plenty of room. Published sites don't expire — they stay live until you delete them.

Can I use my own domain with the deployed Hugo site?

Every site gets a free harvis.page address, and you can pick your own subdomain from the dashboard after claiming it — my-app.harvis.page instead of a random one. Pointing a domain you already own (like mystore.com) at the site isn't supported yet.

How is this different from deploying Hugo to Vercel or Netlify?

Vercel and Netlify are built around connecting a Git repo and running your build on their servers, with a dashboard to configure it. harvis skips all of that: you build locally (or in your own CI), run one CLI command against the output folder, and get a link — no project setup, and no account needed until you want to keep the site.

other frameworks

Deploying something else?

The recipe is the same everywhere — build it, then npx harvis deploy the output.