Staging vs production

Two surfaces

Surface	URL	Updated by	Audience
Staging	https://<subdomain>.frontpage.host	push, prompt, edit, editor UI	You, your team, your agents (preview)
Production	Custom domain (when connected), after publish	frontpage publish (or Publish in the editor)	End customers on the live domain

What “goes live” means

When you push or finish an agent run, Frontpage builds the site branch and serves it on the subdomain. That is intentional and expected. Subdomains are the staging area.

There is no separate CLI command agents must run to “deploy staging.” After the site compile is ready, open the subdomain. frontpage deploy wait (or push --wait) blocks until the live compile SHA equals the git tip. A file-only push has no editor agent run. Do not treat a historical “Your changes are live” message as this compile. That command does not promote production.

Publish is a deliberate promote

frontpage publish --site <subdomain>

Publish copies the last ready staging compile to production. It returns 409 if the git tip is not compiled yet. Use frontpage publish --wait so you do not promote the previous build. After publish, check <meta name="frontpage:commit"> on the custom domain.

Recommended human workflow

1. Agent or developer pushes changes.
2. Review https://<subdomain>.frontpage.host.
3. If good, human runs Publish in the editor or frontpage publish.
4. If not, keep iterating on staging.

History markers

frontpage history marks tips with S (staging) and P (production). They can differ when staging is ahead of the last publish.

frontpage history --json

Unpublish

frontpage unpublish takes production offline (admin only). Requires --yes when stdin is not a TTY. Agents must not run this unless explicitly asked.