PortalJS — Deploy

Overview

Publish an existing PortalJS portal to PortalJS Arc — Datopian's managed static hosting on Cloudflare. Build a static export, upload it to the Arc API, and print a live https://SLUG.arc.portaljs.com URL. Re-running redeploys the same portal (idempotent on the slug). This is a single-target skill — it deploys to Arc only. For self-hosting, run npm run build and upload out/ to any static host; no skill required for that path. Arc serves static exports only — SSR is not hosted on Arc yet.

Prerequisites

• A PortalJS portal directory with a package.json that lists next as a dependency.
• Node 18+ and npm on PATH (the Arc device-login flow uses Node's global fetch).
• curl and tar available for packaging and upload.
• A PortalJS Arc token — read from PORTALJS_TOKEN, or ~/.portaljs/credentials ({"token":"…"}). If neither exists, the skill signs in on demand via a device-code flow; no manual token copying required.
• If the portal stores large data in Git LFS/R2, do not run git lfs pull before deploying — large datasets are served from Cloudflare R2 via absolute URLs in datasets.json, not copied into the export.

Instructions

The canonical, full step-by-step workflow is .claude/commands/portaljs-deploy.md — the single source of truth. Read and follow it when executing. Summary:

1. Gather input — portal directory (default .) and slug (default from package.json name or directory name, slugified). Confirm the directory is a Next.js project; reject reserved slugs (www, api, admin, staging, arc).
2. Resolve the Arc token: read PORTALJS_TOKEN, else ~/.portaljs/credentials; if missing, run the device-authorization sign-in flow and save the returned token.
3. Ensure next.config.js sets output: 'export' and images: { unoptimized: true }, then run npm run build; stop if the build fails.
4. Verify the export carries no dataset bytes — run npm run check-export (or scripts/check-export.mjs) to catch Git LFS pointer leaks and oversized data files.
5. Tar the out/ directory and POST it to $PORTALJS_ARC_API/v1/deploy?slug=<slug> with the bearer token; handle 200/401/409/400/413 responses distinctly.
6. Report the live URL, file count, upload size, and R2-vs-inline dataset counts.

Output

• Modified (if needed): next.config.js — adds output: 'export' and images: { unoptimized: true } when absent, preserving the rest of the config.
• Created (on first sign-in): ~/.portaljs/credentials (mode 0600).
• Verified: npm run build exits 0, out/index.html exists, the export-hygiene check passes.
• Result: the portal is live at https://SLUG.arc.portaljs.com; re-running updates the same slug in place.

Error Handling

Symptom	Cause	Fix
NOT_A_PORTAL error	No next dependency found in PORTAL_DIR/package.json	Run from a valid portal directory, or pass the correct path.
Slug rejected	Derived slug is reserved (www, api, …) or not a valid DNS label	Pass an explicit --slug <name>.
Build fails (non-zero exit)	App/config error surfaced in npm run build	Print the log, fix the error, never deploy a failing build.
check-export fails	Git LFS pointer leaked into out/, or a data file exceeds the size budget	Reference large data by absolute R2 URL via portaljs-add-dataset; don't git lfs pull before building.
401 on upload	Token invalid, expired, or revoked	Re-run the device sign-in flow once, retry the upload; stop if it 401s again.
409 on upload	Slug already taken by another account	Choose a different --slug.
400 / 413 on upload	Malformed slug or export too large	Read the JSON error field and address the specific cause.

Examples

Example 1 — Deploy the current directory with the default slug

/portaljs-deploy

Example 2 — Deploy with an explicit slug

/portaljs-deploy --slug my-open-data

Example 3 — Non-interactive deploy from CI with a token env var

export PORTALJS_TOKEN=arc_live_xxxxxxxx
/portaljs-deploy ./portals/city-budget --slug city-budget

Resources

• Full workflow: .claude/commands/portaljs-deploy.md
• Deploy internals reference: references/reference.md
• Related skills: portaljs-new-portal, portaljs-add-dataset, portaljs-connect-ckan
• PortalJS Arc dashboard (sign in, manage tokens): https://arc.portaljs.com