Deploying

Push the public/ directory to a static host — and the one config detail nobody warns you about.

Verne writes a self-contained public/ directory. Any static host can serve it: there is no server-side runtime, no API routes, no database. What follows is one fully-worked path (Clever Cloud) plus the single detail you must get right whatever the host.

The one config detail

Set baseURL: in verne.yaml to the canonical, public URL of the site, including the scheme and trailing slash:

yaml
baseURL: "https://docs.example.com/"

baseURL is concatenated into the sitemap, RSS feeds, JSON-LD payloads, canonical <link> tags, and Open Graph URLs. A wrong value here means search engines index the wrong host. Verne validates the format at build time and refuses non-http(s):// schemes.

Clever Cloud (static application)

Create a static application and set two environment variables in the dashboard (InformationEnvironment variables):

VariableValueRole
CC_WEBROOT/publicServed and kept in the build cache
CC_BUILD_COMMANDverne buildRuns on new deploys, restarts use the cache

Drop a mise.toml at the root of your site declaring the two tools the build needs:

toml
[tools]
"github:alecthomas/chroma" = "latest"
"github:davlgd/verne"      = "latest"

Clever Cloud picks mise.toml up automatically, fetches chroma and verne for the host architecture, then executes CC_BUILD_COMMAND. Pin specific versions by replacing "latest" with any upstream tag (e.g. "v2.14.0", "0.1.0").

A working reference lives in the labs repository:

https://github.com/davlgd/labs/blob/main/mise.toml

That’s the whole deploy story: push to the application’s git remote and the site rebuilds.

Sanity checks

After deploying, hit:

  • /sitemap.xml — should list every page
  • /robots.txt — should reference the sitemap
  • A nested page like /guides/quick-start/ — should load with no 404s
  • The on-this-page TOC links — should jump to anchors, not 404 fragments

If anything’s off, run verne build locally and diff your public/ against what the host serves.