Ship It Safely

The last step is easy. Knowing what you're publishing is harder.

Putting a page on the internet takes about a minute now, and that's the dangerous part. In this chapter you'll publish your dashboard, with the fake data, and learn where the line sits between what you can ship yourself and what needs an engineer.

Gabe

We used Lovable to prototype an American Idol-style voting platform for a client in Jamaica. The prototype came together so fast that we charged only $3,000, assuming the remaining 20% would be easy. The last 20% took far longer than the first 80%. The demo was beautiful, and making it production-grade still needed an engineer in the loop at every step. Keep that in mind the first time your own demo looks finished.

What Goes to Anthropic

Claude Code runs on your laptop, but your prompts and whatever it reads go to Anthropic so the model can respond. On Pro and Max, you choose whether that data can train future models, in your privacy settings. If you allow it, Anthropic keeps it for 5 years, and if you don’t, 30 days. On Team and Enterprise plans, it isn’t used for training by default. Check that setting before you point Claude at anything real, and check whether your company allows it at all.

Using Your Real Spreadsheet

Once you’ve checked that setting, you can use your own numbers. Make a separate folder, because the data lives inside index.html, which means publishing that page publishes your data. Never drag that folder onto the internet. The fake version is your public one. The real version stays on your laptop. If people need to see the real one from elsewhere, you now need a login, and that’s a job for an engineer.

The Three Danger Zones

Logins, payments and personal data. Claude will happily build all three, and the result will look finished. A mistake in a dashboard gives you a wrong number. A mistake here leaks someone’s data or takes someone’s money, and you won’t see it by clicking around. Build the prototype if you like, then bring in an engineer before a real person uses it. Keys and passwords (secrets) belong in the same category. Never paste them into the chat or into a file you publish.

What It Costs

Pro is $20 a month, and Netlify has a free plan that’s plenty for one page. Your Claude plan has usage limits. If you hit one, you wait for it to reset or move up a plan. The bigger cost is your time, and the calculator below takes that seriously.

Build it

1. Make a real save point

   Git is a tool that keeps a history of your project, so you can get back to any saved version, long after rewind has forgotten. You don’t have to learn it. Claude runs it for you.
   Paste this into Claude Copy

   Set up Git in this folder if it isn't already, and save the current version as "first public version". Don't send anything anywhere. Explain in two sentences what you did and how I'd get back to this version.

   Stuck?

   It says Git isn't installed.

   On Windows, install Git for Windows with the default options, then try again. On a Mac, accept the offer to install the developer tools if one appears.

2. Make a folder with only what you mean to publish

   This is the step people skip. Netlify publishes everything you drag. Your project folder has your spec, your CLAUDE.md and your spreadsheets in it, and every one of those would get its own public address.
   Paste this into Claude Copy

   Make a folder called publish inside this project, with a copy of index.html and nothing else. Check that index.html contains only the clean sample data and loads nothing from outside. Then list exactly what's in the publish folder.

3. Drag it to Netlify

   Go to Netlify Drop and drag the publish folder onto the page. A minute later you have a URL. Now sign up for a free account and claim the site. Until you do, other people may not be able to open it, and unclaimed sites get deleted, so your link would die. Netlify’s rules on this have changed several times, so follow what the page tells you.
   Stuck?

   It shows a list of files or "page not found".

   You probably dragged the wrong folder. The file has to be named exactly index.html and sit directly inside the folder you drag.

   I published the wrong thing.

   Claim the site right away, then delete it from your Netlify account. You can’t remove a site you haven’t claimed, and Netlify support has said it can’t delete one for you. If what you published was real data or a key, treat it as leaked: change the key, and tell whoever needs to know.

4. Send it to someone

   Open it on your phone. Then send it to one person and ask what they think it’s for. If they can’t tell, that’s useful, and fixing it is one prompt away. When you change something, drag the new publish folder onto your site’s deploys page in Netlify.