cloudflare-static-deploy

name

cloudflare-static-deploy

description

Deploy wcygan.net as a pure static site to Cloudflare via Workers Assets. Use when configuring static prerendering, updating vite.config.ts Nitro preset, writing wrangler.jsonc, tuning Cloudflare Workers Builds dashboard settings, switching CI or deploys to Deno, or debugging failed Cloudflare deploys. Keywords cloudflare, wrangler, workers assets, pages, deploy, prerender, static, nitro preset, deno ci, workers builds, wrangler.jsonc, deno.lock, .output/public

Cloudflare Static Deploy

How wcygan.net ships: prerender every route to flat HTML/JS/CSS, upload via Workers Assets, no server at runtime. No @cloudflare/vite-plugin, no wrangler runtime coupling in app code.

Why static, not SSR

The blog has zero per-request logic. Homepage, /posts, /{slug}, /about, /resume, /feed, /mermaid-examples are all content-static. Mermaid diagrams are rendered to static SVG at build time, so they ship as plain images with no client-side JavaScript. RSS is a committed public/rss.xml. Prerendering beats SSR on cost, latency, portability, and operational surface.

If we ever add auth, per-user data, or build-time bindings (KV/D1), revisit — see "When to switch to the Workers runtime" below.

Required pieces

1. vite.config.ts — prerender + keep Nitro deno-server preset

tanstackStart({
  srcDirectory: 'src',
  prerender: {
    enabled: true,
    crawlLinks: true,
    autoSubfolderIndex: true,
    failOnError: true,
  },
}),
react(),
nitro({ preset: 'deno-server' }),

• Do NOT use preset: 'static'. Nitro's own prerenderer with that preset does not know about TanStack Start's route handlers and 404s on every path. TanStack Start runs its own prerender against the Nitro-built server via a preview server. Keeping preset: 'deno-server' gives it a Deno-compatible server to probe, and the prerendered HTML lands in .output/public/ alongside a server bundle in .output/server/ that we simply don't ship.
• crawlLinks discovers posts via links from / and /posts. Every post must be reachable from a crawled page, otherwise add it to prerender.pages: ['/slug-a', ...].
• autoSubfolderIndex emits /posts/foo/index.html (correct for Workers Assets routing) rather than /posts/foo.html.

Mermaid is build-time only now (the render script serves it to a headless Chrome; it never enters the client or server bundle), but the alias and ssr.external entry still guard any stray import. Keep the Mermaid alias as a regex — a string alias gets re-applied by Nitro's SSR bundler and produces mermaid/dist/.../dist/... paths that fail to resolve:

resolve: {
  alias: [
    { find: '~', replacement: new URL('./src', import.meta.url).pathname },
    { find: /^mermaid$/, replacement: 'mermaid/dist/mermaid.esm.min.mjs' },
  ],
},
ssr: { external: ['mermaid'] },

2. wrangler.jsonc — assets-only Worker

{
  "$schema": "node_modules/wrangler/config-schema.json",
  "name": "wcygan-net",
  "compatibility_date": "2026-04-13",
  "assets": {
    "directory": ".output/public",
    "not_found_handling": "404-page",
  },
}

No main. No nodejs_compat. Wrangler is a deploy CLI only — not a runtime dependency. Keep the file minimal; every added field is a coupling point.

3. deno.json tasks

"build": "vite build",
"deploy": "deno task build && wrangler deploy",
"preview-static": "deno run --allow-net --allow-read --allow-sys jsr:@std/http@1/file-server .output/public"

Delete any start script pointing at .output/server/index.mjs — that file no longer exists under the static preset.

4. Cloudflare Workers Builds dashboard

The Workers Builds image as of 2026-05 ships Bun and Node, but not Deno, so we install Deno inline. CF auto-runs bun install first (because package.json exists); that's fine — the build command then layers Deno on top for the actual build.

Field	Value
Build command	curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh -s -- -y v2.6.10 && export PATH="$HOME/.deno/bin:$PATH" && deno install --frozen && deno task build
Deploy command	export PATH="$HOME/.deno/bin:$PATH" && deno x wrangler deploy
Non-production branch deploy cmd	export PATH="$HOME/.deno/bin:$PATH" && deno x wrangler versions upload
Path	/
Production branch	main

Three non-obvious requirements baked into those commands:

1. Pin the Deno version (v2.6.10 as the sh -s positional arg — see install script source). The unpinned curl | sh form grabs the latest release, and newer Deno tightens node:_http_server.writeHead argument validation, which breaks srvx@0.11.15 during TanStack Start's prerender step. Bump the pin only after locally rebuilding on a newer Deno and confirming .output/public/*.html still emits.
2. Each command exports $HOME/.deno/bin to PATH independently. The build command's export doesn't persist — deploy commands run in a fresh shell. Without the re-export you get /bin/sh: 1: deno: not found.
3. deno x wrangler ... replaces bunx and deno task --eval. deno x is the npx/bunx equivalent (since Deno 2). It resolves wrangler from node_modules populated by deno install --frozen. No Bun on the deploy path.

Enable Build cache to reuse node_modules across builds.

Commit only deno.lock — never bun.lock, pnpm-lock.yaml, or package-lock.json alongside it.

Verification checklist after deno task build

• .output/public/index.html exists and is non-empty (silent prerender failure can leave the dir asset-only)
• .output/public/posts/index.html exists
• .output/public/<slug>/index.html exists for every MDX post
• .output/public/rss.xml present (copied from public/)
• .output/server/ exists (Nitro Deno bundle — we just don't deploy it; wrangler.jsonc has no main, only assets.directory)
• Total .output/public/ size sane (posts + mermaid client chunk)
• Build log contains [prerender] Prerendered N pages: with the expected route list, not Prerendered 0 pages:

scripts/build.mjs must fail loudly

TanStack Start's prerender step rejects with an unhandledRejection rather than throwing, so a naïve try/catch + process.exit(0) builder script reports success even when zero HTML emitted. Guard against this at the top of scripts/build.mjs:

process.on("unhandledRejection", (err) => {
  console.error("Unhandled rejection during build:", err);
  process.exit(1);
});

Without this, a broken prerender produces a deploy that uploads only /assets/*.js and yields a 404 on every route — the failure mode behind the May 2026 outage.

Catch-all route gotcha

src/routes/$slug.tsx rejects slugs containing dots in beforeLoad. Keep this. Static files (rss.xml, favicon.ico) live in public/ and Workers Assets serves them before the catch-all is ever consulted. If you rename the guard logic, prerender will try to render /rss.xml as a post — don't.

Common failure modes

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Cloudflare build fails with "pnpm not found", "bun not found", or lockfile mismatch	Dashboard still running an old package-manager command	Replace Build command with the pinned-Deno form from the dashboard table above
wrangler deploy errors "No compatible entrypoint"	wrangler.jsonc has main but no server bundle built	Remove main — assets-only deploys omit it
Post route returns 404 in prod but works locally	Prerender crawler didn't discover it	Add to prerender.pages explicitly or ensure it's linked from /posts
/rss.xml returns HTML 404 page	Catch-all matched before static file	Confirm $slug.tsx beforeLoad still rejects dotted slugs
Mermaid chunk appears in client bundle	A source file imported mermaid directly; it must stay build-time only (scripts/render-diagrams.mjs)	Remove the import. Posts embed prebuilt SVGs from public/; no client mermaid chunk should ever exist
Build succeeds locally, fails on Cloudflare	Build image Deno/Wrangler mismatch or a missing lifecycle script approval	Check build log for Deno version, deno install warnings, and module resolution errors
Prod 404 on every route; build reported "Success"; deploy uploaded only /assets/*.js	Prerender crashed with TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: "headers" argument must be an Array from srvx/dist/adapters/node.mjs writeHead. CF's unpinned Deno is stricter than local.	Pin Deno version in the build command (sh -s -- -y vX.Y.Z). Add the unhandledRejection guard above so future regressions fail the build instead of shipping empty.
/bin/sh: 1: deno: not found during deploy command	Build command's export PATH doesn't survive into the fresh deploy shell	Prepend export PATH="$HOME/.deno/bin:$PATH" && to every deploy/version command
Transient error reading a body from connection on a single npm tarball during deno install --frozen	npm CDN flake in CF build sandbox	Hit "Retry deployment" in dashboard. If recurrent, wrap with for i in 1 2 3; do deno install --frozen && break; sleep 3; done

When to switch to the Workers runtime

Only if ALL of these become true:

• Need to read request context (cookies, auth) server-side
• Need Cloudflare bindings (KV, D1, R2, Queues, DO)
• Need ISR / on-demand revalidation

Then: install @cloudflare/vite-plugin + wrangler, replace Nitro with the Cloudflare plugin, add main: "@tanstack/react-start/server-entry" and compatibility_flags: ["nodejs_compat"] to wrangler.jsonc. See the Cloudflare TanStack Start framework guide (link below).

Reference docs

Primary:

• TanStack Start — Static Prerendering — prerender config shape; crawler behavior
• Nitro — Deployment presets — static preset and output layout
• Cloudflare Workers — Static Assets — assets binding in wrangler.jsonc, not_found_handling modes
• Cloudflare Workers Builds — Build configuration — dashboard build and deploy fields

Secondary / "if we migrate to Workers runtime":

• Cloudflare — TanStack Start framework guide — the SSR-on-Workers path
• Cloudflare — Wrangler vs Vite plugin — when each is appropriate
• Cloudflare Changelog (Dec 19, 2025) — TanStack Start prerendering — prerender combined with bindings
• TanStack Start — Incremental Static Regeneration — if we outgrow pure static

Adjacent project skills:

• wcygan-net-stack — stack fundamentals (Deno, TanStack Start, MDX, Mermaid)
• github-actions-troubleshooter — CI failures that aren't Cloudflare-specific