artifacts

Self-hosted, Claude-style artifact publishing

POST HTML, a React component, Markdown, or a zipped static site. Get back an unguessable URL on your own domain.

Quick start · Deploy · API · CLI · MCP · Security

Dashboard: publish, group by project, and manage

A published artifact served with the viewer topbar

About

AI assistants produce a lot of shareable output: dashboards, prototypes, reports, small apps. Claude's hosted artifacts work well, but the URLs live on someone else's infrastructure. This is the self-hosted version, about 1,100 lines. You POST content, it serves the rendered result at an unguessable URL on a domain you control.

It runs as one container with a single admin account and, by default, no database. Each artifact is a directory of plain files under /data, so backing up that directory backs up everything. On hosts that wipe local disk on restart, point it at durable external storage instead (an S3-compatible bucket, a git remote, or Postgres) by setting STORAGE_BACKEND. See deploying.

Features

• Four content types. HTML, JSX/TSX (a single React component, no build step), Markdown, and zipped static sites.
• Agent-native, human-friendly. A built-in MCP server lets Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP client publish with one tool call. Humans get a drag-and-drop web UI at / (behind an admin login) and a CLI.
• Two-tier auth. An admin logs into the dashboard with a password; CLI and MCP carry scoped, revocable API keys (read / publish / full) with optional expiry, so you never share one master secret.
• Private by default, with per-artifact visibility. A new artifact is private, shared through a signed capability link (?k=…) you can rotate to revoke. Switch any artifact to public (anyone with the bare link) or password-protected. Nothing is discoverable by default: unguessable slugs, noindex everywhere. See visibility.
• Optional viewer frame. A slim top toolbar (title, copy link, hide) like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT artifacts. Toggle it globally in Settings or per artifact; ?raw=1 always serves the bare content.
• Markdown render settings. Pick the reading font, content width, base font size, and starting theme for every Markdown artifact in Settings. Markdown renders from its source on each view, so a change shows on existing artifacts too. Framed Markdown gets a navbar button that cycles Auto, Light, and Dark for that reader. See docs/formats.md.
• Organize by project. Group artifacts built for the same project into collapsible sections, with a search box across project, title, slug, and tags. Tags stay for cross-cutting labels.
• Lifecycle controls. Custom slugs, rename, tags, disable without deleting, auto-expire, delete.
• Abuse-resistant. Login and unlock endpoints are rate-limited per client IP (failures only), and password hashing runs off the event loop, so a burst of guesses slows those two routes instead of stalling the server. Set TRUST_PROXY for the real client IP behind Cloudflare or a reverse proxy. See deploying.

Quick start

Clone, configure, start:

git clone https://github.com/anvilnine/artifacts && cd artifacts
cp .env.example .env   # set ARTIFACTS_API_KEY (openssl rand -hex 32) and BASE_URL
docker compose up -d

Or skip the clone and run the image directly:

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -v artifacts-data:/data \
  -e ARTIFACTS_API_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  -e BASE_URL=https://artifacts.example.com \
  ghcr.io/anvilnine/artifacts:latest

Publish something:

curl -s -X POST https://artifacts.example.com/api/artifacts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ARTIFACTS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"content": "<h1>hello</h1>", "type": "html", "slug": "hello", "tags": ["demo"]}'
# {"slug":"hello","url":"https://artifacts.example.com/a/hello"}

Let Claude Code publish for you:

claude mcp add --transport http artifacts https://artifacts.example.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer ${ARTIFACTS_API_KEY}" --scope user

Documentation

Development

No build step. Node ≥ 22.

npm install
cp .env.example .env   # any ARTIFACTS_API_KEY works locally, e.g. "test"
npm run dev
# UI at http://localhost:3000

The whole test suite is one shell script:

bash .github/workflows/smoke.sh http://localhost:3000 <your-key>

PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Hosted version

Self-hosting is the product, and the open source version stays complete. If you would rather not run a server, Anvil Nine is building a managed version: same publishing flow, custom domains, backups handled for you. A waitlist page opens with the first cloud announcement; watch this repo's releases until then.

Security

Uploaded HTML runs in the browser. That is the whole point, so the model is built to contain it:

• Serve artifacts from their own origin. Point artifact URLs at a domain that hosts nothing else, so a published page can never touch the dashboard's session cookie.
• Writes need a scoped API key. Publishing carries a bearer key; the admin dashboard uses a separate HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict session cookie.
• Reads rely on unguessable slugs. Public artifacts are reachable by anyone with the link and carry noindex, but there is no listing to browse. Don't publish secrets.
• Credential routes are throttled. Login and unlock rate-limit per client IP and hash passwords off the event loop. Put a CDN or edge limiter in front for volumetric attacks.

Full threat model in SECURITY.md.

Acknowledgements

This project stands on other people's open source. All of the following are MIT licensed.

Runtime

• express for the HTTP server
• marked for Markdown rendering
• nanoid for unguessable slug generation
• adm-zip for zip site extraction
• zod for request validation
• @modelcontextprotocol/sdk for the built-in MCP server

Optional storage backends (loaded only when selected)

• aws4fetch for S3-compatible signing
• isomorphic-git for the git backend
• pg for the Postgres backend

The SQLite backend uses Node's built-in node:sqlite (no dependency).

Web UI

• Tabler Icons for the app-bar icons (search, new, settings, lock), inlined as SVG

License

MIT © 2026 Zonily Jame

_{One container. Plain files by default; pluggable S3 / git / Postgres / SQLite storage.}