RunCabin Blog · How it works

How to publish a website from Claude (or your AI assistant)

June 16, 2026 · 6 min read

You can now ask an AI assistant to build a website, then ask it to put that website online - and it actually goes live, at a real HTTPS address, without you leaving the chat. No zip file to download, no Netlify or Vercel account to create, no GitHub, no DNS records to wrestle. This is the step that has been missing, and this post is the practical how-to for closing it.

If you have not read it yet, our explainer on what an AI-editable website is covers the difference between a site an AI generates once and a site an AI can keep managing. This post is the hands-on sequel: how the assistant deploys the site itself.

Can AI really put my website online for me?

Yes. Your assistant generates the website files - the HTML, the styling, the images - and then hands them to a service that gives them a real home on the web. A minute later you have a working link you can open on your phone and send to a customer. No hosting account to set up first, no payment to put the first version online, no waiting for a domain or a security certificate.

The catch worth stating up front: the assistant deploys the files it made. It is publishing a real website, not standing up a database or a program running around the clock behind it. For most local businesses that is exactly what you want - a clean, fast site with your services, your photos, and a way to get a quote. If you need something more involved, that is a different product, and we will point you to it at the end.

The problem: building is easy now, publishing is not

Ask Claude or ChatGPT for "a one-page site for my landscaping business" and you will get clean HTML, CSS, and images in seconds. That part is solved. Then you hit the wall everyone hits: now what?

The usual answer is a chore list. Copy the files out of the chat. Make an account somewhere. Figure out how to upload them. Buy a domain at a registrar. Point DNS records at the host and wait for them to propagate. Wait again for an SSL certificate so the site loads over HTTPS instead of throwing a "not secure" warning.

None of that is building a website. It is plumbing, and it is exactly where most people give up and the half-built site dies in a chat window.

What is an MCP connector, in plain English?

Normally an AI assistant can only write text back to you. It can describe a website, or even hand you a pile of code, but it cannot go do anything out in the world on its own. An MCP connector is the piece that changes that. Think of it as a set of buttons you let the assistant press - in this case, buttons like "create a site" and "deploy it." MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, but the name does not matter. What matters is that once you connect it, your assistant can take the action instead of just talking about it.

You connect RunCabin's MCP connector to your assistant one time. After that, asking it to publish a website is a normal request, the same as asking it to draft an email.

How to publish a website from Claude: the short version

Here is the whole flow, start to finish.

1. Connect RunCabin once. In Claude, open Customize → Connectors, choose Add custom connector, and paste https://runcabin.com/mcp. You sign in through your browser with a normal sign-in window - there is no API key to copy or paste. You can see the full connect-your-assistant setup steps for Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code on one page.
2. Ask for the site. Describe what you want in plain English, the same way you already do: "Build a one-page site for Ridgeline Roofing with a services list and a contact section." The assistant generates the page.
3. Ask it to publish. Say "publish it." The assistant calls RunCabin, which deploys the files and hands back a real link like https://ridgeline-roofing.sites.runcabin.com. It is live over HTTPS immediately - no DNS wait, no certificate wait. Open it on your phone and it is there.
4. Optional: put it on your own domain. When you want a custom domain, the assistant can check what is available and show the price, then hand you a checkout link. You approve and pay; the assistant never moves money. More on that below.

The site does not get described to you - it gets stood up. You go from a chat to a working web address in one request.

What you get for free, and what costs money

Free, no account and no card: your site goes live at a subdomain - https://your-name.sites.runcabin.com - over HTTPS, immediately. There is no payment step to get a real, shareable, secure URL. You can deploy, look at it, change it, and redeploy without spending anything.

Paid, and only when you choose it: a custom domain (your own .com). The domain itself is a pass-through at the registrar's price, plus $19.99/mo for hosting on your own domain. Every paid step is a checkout link handed to you - the human - on RunCabin's own checkout page, with the price shown up front before you commit. The assistant cannot accidentally spend your money, because it never has the ability to spend in the first place.

So the worst your assistant can do is hand you a link. You decide whether to click it. That is by design - it is the main reason this is safe to put in front of a non-technical owner.

If you already own a domain, you can bring it: subscribe first, and then the connector returns the exact DNS records to set at your registrar.

Why not just export the files and host them yourself?

You can. Plenty of tools will hand you a zip of HTML and tell you that you are "done." Then the real work starts: pick a host, create an account, upload the files, register a domain, edit DNS records, wait for them to propagate, get an SSL certificate issued, and renew all of it on a schedule. Every one of those is a place to get stuck, and each one is a separate bill. That is the export-and-self-host treadmill - fine if hosting is your hobby, and miserable if you just wanted a website for your business.

The point of publishing straight from your assistant is to skip the treadmill entirely. Free subdomain to start, one approved checkout for a real domain when you want one, and the files stay yours the whole time.

What exactly gets deployed when you publish from your AI assistant?

It does: take the static site your assistant produced - the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images - and give it a real home on the web with a live HTTPS URL. The assistant builds the site; RunCabin hosts it. Your site stays yours, and so does your domain - there is no lock-in, and you can take both with you.

It does not: spin up a database or a 24/7 AI agent through this path. If you want a site you can keep editing by chatting with an AI, or one with backend pieces, that is our separate AI Website Builder - a different product. Keep the two straight: the connector publishes the static site the assistant made; the builder is the describe-and-keep-editing product.

The core tools, if you are curious

Under the hood the connector exposes a small set of named tools your assistant can call: cabin_create_site, cabin_deploy, cabin_deploy_status, cabin_check_domain, cabin_attach_domain, cabin_domain_status, and cabin_list_sites. You never call these yourself - the assistant does, in response to plain requests. RunCabin is listed on the official MCP Registry as com.runcabin/cabin, and sign-in uses OAuth 2.1 in the browser.

Does this work in ChatGPT, Cursor, and other assistants?

It works anywhere that supports custom MCP connectors, all pointing at the same https://runcabin.com/mcp endpoint.

• Claude (web or desktop) is the smoothest path: Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the URL.
• Claude Code: run claude mcp add --transport http runcabin https://runcabin.com/mcp.
• Cursor and VS Code: one-click install buttons on the connect page.
• ChatGPT: works today through developer mode / custom connectors using the same endpoint. To be straight about it: this is the developer-mode path, not a finished, publicly-listed ChatGPT app. If you want the least-fuss experience, use Claude.

Who this is for - and who it is not

This is a good fit if you are already comfortable working inside an AI assistant, you want a real site online fast, and you are happy to manage it yourself. It is the cleanest way to get from "the AI made me a page" to "the page is live" without learning a hosting platform.

Is RunCabin the only MCP server that can deploy a website?

No, and we will not pretend otherwise - Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare all offer MCP servers too, and they are good at what they do. The difference is who they are built for. Those are developer tools: they generally expect an account, a payment method, and some comfort with the command line. RunCabin is built for the person who is not a developer. The free subdomain needs no account and no payment, you are not locked into one host or registrar, and every paid step is a checkout link you approve - so an assistant cannot run up a bill by accident. You can also take your site and your domain with you whenever you like.

It is not the right fit if you would rather not touch any of this. If "connect a connector and ask it to publish" already sounds like more than you want to do, skip it - there is a simpler door below.

If you would rather someone just do it for you

Plenty of small-business owners do not want to be in the loop at all, and that is completely reasonable - you have a business to run. For that, we build the whole thing for you: a done-for-you small-business website for any local trade, live in minutes, with a quote form that goes straight to your inbox. It is $39.99/mo, no setup fee, no per-lead charges. You can read how it works on the done-for-you small-business websites page, or jump straight to a free preview of your business website.

Either way - your assistant publishes it, or we do - the goal is the same: a real website, online, that is actually yours.

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Related reading: what an AI-editable website is · what a small-business website actually costs