Deploy from Claude Code in 60 seconds

Deploying from Claude Code means giving Claude Code 15 tools — including ship_site, edit_file, and rollback — so it can deploy and edit your live website from the chat. Setup takes two commands and about 60 seconds. No GitHub account, no Vercel account, no credit card.

If you have Claude Code open and a website idea, you can go from sentence to URL in a minute. This is the workflow.

The 60-second setup

npm install -g krexel
krexel login

The first command installs the Krexel CLI plus the krexel-mcp server. The second asks for a Krexel API key (or reads KREXEL_API_KEY from your shell if it's already exported) and stores it for the session. If you don't have a key yet, mint one at krexel.com/keys.

Then add the MCP server to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport stdio krexel -- krexel-mcp

That registers 15 tools with Claude Code. Restart the Claude Code session and ask:

"What tools do you have for Krexel?"

The response should list the 15 tools — ship_site, create_site, trigger_deploy, edit_file, rollback, attach_domain (writes) plus list_sites, get_site, list_deploys, get_deploy, get_deploy_logs, list_domains, list_files, read_file, get_status (reads). If it does, you are deployed-ready.

What you can do from the chat

Once the tools are live, the workflow is just a conversation.

Ship a brand new site in 30 seconds:

"Create a static site for a coffee shop called Driftwood. Use a cream-and-ember palette, three pages (Home, Menu, Visit), a contact form, and a Google Maps embed on Visit. Ship it to a krexel.com subdomain."

Claude Code calls create_site to mint a new site, writes the HTML/CSS/JS, calls ship_site to deploy, and returns the live *.krexel.com URL. The site is on the public internet before you finish reading this sentence.

Edit the live site in 8 seconds:

"Change the H1 on the home page from 'Driftwood' to 'Driftwood — slow coffee, fast wifi'."

Claude Code calls list_files to see the live HTML, read_file to fetch the H1, and edit_file to rewrite it. The change is live in 8 seconds. No git commit, no PR, no rebuild of the whole site.

Roll back if you don't like the change:

"Revert that."

Claude Code calls rollback with the previous deploy_id. The site snaps back. The edit is still in the conversation history if you want to try again.

Read the current site to understand what's deployed:

"Show me the live HTML of the menu page."

Claude Code calls read_file against the live deployed version. Not the local copy, not a cached build — the actual file serving on the edge.

Why this works

The krexel-mcp server is a thin wrapper around the Krexel HTTP API. Every tool is a one-call wrapper:

Because the API is a normal HTTP API, anything you can do from Claude Code you can also do from curl, the CLI, a Slack bot, or a CI pipeline. The MCP server is sugar, not lock-in. See the MCP install guide for the full tool catalogue.

Common setup problems

"The MCP server isn't showing up in Claude Code." Run claude mcp list — you should see krexel in the list. If not, the claude mcp add command didn't write to the right config. Re-run with --scope user to make it global.

"Claude Code says 'not authenticated'." Your API key is rejected. Mint a fresh one at krexel.com/keys, then either export KREXEL_API_KEY=*** and restart Claude Code, or re-run krexel login with the new key.

"The first deploy took 90 seconds, not 60." First deploys include a build that subsequent deploys cache. The second deploy in the same conversation is 8 seconds.

"Patch deploys sometimes fail with 'asset too large'." The MCP edit_file tool accepts files up to 1 MB (per M3-Phase 1) and a total manifest up to 25 MB. The dropzone zip upload path accepts up to 50 MB total. If your AI is generating an image larger than 1 MB, ask it to compress to a webp first or upload the image to your repo and reference it by URL.

"I want to deploy a Next.js app with SSR." Krexel does not support server-side rendering today. It is a static host. Set output: 'export' in next.config.js and the rest of the workflow is identical.

What this replaces

The traditional "deploy from Claude Code" workflow, before Krexel, looked like this:

1. Ask Claude to write the code locally
2. git init, git add ., git commit
3. Create a GitHub repo
4. git remote add origin, git push
5. Sign up for Vercel / Netlify / Cloudflare Pages
6. Connect the GitHub repo
7. Wait for the build
8. Get a URL

That is 8 steps and 5-10 minutes. The Krexel flow is 2 commands and 60 seconds. The savings compound: if your AI is making 30 edits a day, the difference between 8-second patch deploys and 60-second full rebuilds is two hours of waiting per day.

Try it

npm install -g krexel
krexel login
claude mcp add --transport stdio krexel -- krexel-mcp

Then in Claude Code:

"Ship me a one-page portfolio for a photographer named Maya. Black background, serif headings, three image grids, an about section, a contact form. Use a krexel.com subdomain."

Sixty seconds later you have a live URL. Edit it from the chat. Roll back if you change your mind. No git, no signup, no card.

Read more

• What is AI-native hosting? — the category this fits into
• Krexel vs Vercel — why the Vercel git flow is the wrong shape for AI
• How to let your AI edit a live site — the patch-deploy model in depth
• Install the Krexel CLI — full CLI reference