Assemblage / How it works
The whole thing is one simple idea. A site is a folder, and publishing means syncing that folder to an address. Everything below follows from that.
Make it in a folder
You make the site however you like. Most people describe it to Claude and let the agent write the files. Plain HTML in a folder is enough. If your site has a build step, that works too. Assemblage figures out what to ship and tells you what it decided.
There is no editor to learn and no template to fill in. The folder on your disk is the site.
Publish resolves itself
When you publish, Assemblage looks at your folder, works out what to serve, and says so plainly:
- A plain folder with an
index.htmlpublishes as-is. - A folder with a build step runs the build, then publishes the output. It knows the common output folders like
dist,out,_site, andpublic. - Want to override the guess? A small
site.jsonsettles it:
{ "name": "studio", "dir": "dist", "build": "npm run build" }It never guesses silently. You always see a line like “Publishing ./dist (built with vite)” in Claude’s reply or in the app.
Only changes travel
Every file gets a fingerprint from its contents. Before anything uploads, Assemblage compares your folder to what is already live and sends only the files that changed.
- A 400MB film uploads once. Re-publish and it is not touched again.
- Fix a typo on one page and publishing is near-instant.
- The first publish of a media-heavy site is the only slow one, and you can watch the progress.
Going live and rolling back
Publishing points your address at one saved version of your folder. Two things come from that:
- Go-live is instant. The switch happens all at once. Visitors never catch a half-published site.
- Rollback is easy. Every publish is kept. Point the address at an older version and you are back, with no rebuild.
It syncs both ways
Because the folder is the source of truth, you can pull it back down as easily as you push it up. New laptop, lost files, or a site someone else published: point Assemblage at an empty folder and it fills it in, downloading only what you are missing.
Assemblage never removes your local files on its own. Anything on your disk that is not part of the live site is listed for you and left in place unless you say otherwise.
Simple by design
Assemblage serves plain files: pages, words, images, and video. There are no forms, no logins for your visitors, and no server-side code to maintain. Because it is only files, your site keeps working on its own.