How do I publish what I built with Cursor, Bolt, or an AI assistant?

Cursor, Bolt, v0, Lovable, Claude, ChatGPT — the list of tools that write code from a description keeps growing. They are good at the building step. None of them, on their own, hands a non-developer a clean public link. That last hop is what this guide covers.

Why is publishing the hard part now?

Writing the code used to be the wall. Now the wall has moved. An AI assistant can produce a working game in a single reply, but the reply is text in a chat window — not something a friend can open. Turning that text into a URL still trips people up, because the answer depends on what the tool produced. Sort that out first and the rest is mechanical.

Step 1 — Figure out what your tool produced

Chat-style tools — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — usually produce a single self-contained HTML file, shown as one code block or an artifact. Project-style tools — Cursor, Bolt, v0, Lovable — usually produce a folder of files with a build step. A few prompts in either kind of tool can go the other way, so look at the actual output rather than assuming.

Step 2 — Get the complete, self-contained file

For a single-file project, copy the whole document — it should start with an optional comment header or with the doctype line and end with the closing html tag. Do not copy a trimmed snippet. If your tool gave you several files, ask it directly: "Combine this into one self-contained HTML file with all CSS and JavaScript inline." Games, visualizations, and toys almost always flatten. Apps with a real backend do not — and those belong on a full host.

Step 3 — Publish a single-file project

Open arcadelab.ai/publish, paste the file into the box, and click publish. You get a permanent URL — arcadelab.ai/play/your-project — with no account, no email, and no build step. If the file uses a library like Phaser or p5.js, name it in the ARCADELAB header comment and ArcadeLab injects it from a CDN. The whole step takes under a minute. For more on the format, see what a good single-file HTML game template looks like.

Step 4 — Publish a multi-file app

If the project genuinely needs multiple files, a server, or a database, push the folder to a git host and connect it to Vercel or Netlify, or deploy straight from Replit if you built it there. This path has more steps — a repo, a build configuration, environment variables — and that is the right amount of work for an app that needs all of it. The mistake to avoid is using this path for something that was only ever one file.

Does the AI tool I used change anything?

No. The publishing workflow keys off the output, not the brand of assistant. A single HTML file from Cursor publishes exactly like a single HTML file from Claude. Pick your platform by the shape of the thing in front of you, and the tool that made it stops mattering.

Have a single-file project ready? Publish it at arcadelab.ai/publish.