How to put a Claude-built app online

Which of the three you have

An artifact is the thing that opens in the panel next to the chat: a page, a small tool, a dashboard. It is one self-contained page.

A file in the chat is what you get when you ask for “an HTML file” or “a zip”: the message has a download in it.

A project folder is what Claude Code builds, on your own computer, in a folder you named. It can be a whole site or an app with a server, sign-in and a database. Claude Code can also publish an artifact of its own, a single page at a private link on claude.ai, which it builds from a file it writes outside your project.

What Claude's Publish link does, and doesn't

Open the artifact, click Publish, copy the link. Anyone with the link can view and use the page without a Claude account; they are asked to sign up only for parts that use Claude itself. Publishing is on the Free, Pro and Max plans. On Team and Enterprise, artifacts stay inside the organization unless an owner turns on External sharing.

The link lives on claude.ai, and there is no way to put your own domain on it. Viewers from outside your organization see a label saying the content is user-generated and unverified. Unpublishing is permanent: Claude's help page says you can't publish that artifact again, and that unpublishing deletes any data the artifact stored.

Two things work only while the page is on claude.ai. An artifact can call Claude without an API key, and on Pro and above it can keep up to 20 MB of text between visits. Both run through Claude's own site. Copy the page to a host of your own and those parts stop. If your page relies on either, it stays a published artifact, or you rebuild the feature with a key and a database of your own. Is it safe to put API keys in my app? covers the key part.

Getting the file out

For an artifact, use the controls at the top of the panel: view the code, copy it, or download it. A web page artifact is one HTML file, and that file is the whole site. A React artifact is one component file, which can't be opened on its own; ask Claude to “give me this as a single self-contained HTML page” and download that instead.

A file in the chat: download it. A zip: download it and unzip it.

A Claude Code project is already a folder on your computer. There is nothing to export, and you don't need GitHub for any of this; GitHub is a place to keep copies of a project, and a folder you can zip is enough.

Page or app?

A single page can't sign people in, can't keep data that other visitors will see, and can't hold a key that has to stay hidden. If your page is a calculator, a portfolio, an invitation, a quiz or a tool that saves to the visitor's own browser, it is a page, and any static host takes it. If Claude Code built accounts, a database or a form that sends email, it is an app with a server, and the host has to run it. Does my app need a server? tells the two apart in two minutes.

Before it goes online

Look in the file for anything that looks like a key, a long string after apiKey or starting with sk-; a page in a browser can't keep a secret. Check that anything the page saves isn't meant for other people to see, because browser storage stays on the one device. Give the page a title and a description in its <head>, since that is what a link preview shows. What to ask your AI tool before you put your app online is the full list.

Putting it on saturn

Zip the file (one index.html on its own is fine) or the project folder, and drop it in. saturn reads it, says what it thinks it is, and works out whether it is a page or an app that needs a server: a page is served as it is, an app is built in a sandbox and run. It gets a free address at once. Settings and keys go in separately and are kept encrypted, never inside the files that are served. You pick the smallest plan it fits in and pay at go-live. Your own domain is part of the first release.