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push a directory of html from the terminal and get a four-character url back. a deno cli on cloudflare

feat/source-stable-push
nzip / worker / setup.md
setup.md 14.4K source

One-time Cloudflare setup

Everything here happens once. Day-to-day content pushes never touch wrangler.

The default architecture targets the Workers Free plan. It requires no paid Email Sending subscription: alerts use Email Routing to one verified destination. Free-tier limits are account-wide, so review the budget notes before exposing a busy or multi-tenant deployment.

cd worker

# 1. auth
npx wrangler login

# 2. private Wrangler config
cp wrangler.jsonc wrangler.local.jsonc
# Edit wrangler.local.jsonc now:
# - routes[0].pattern: your control hostname, such as share.demo.dev
# - routes[1]: wildcard route for *.demo.dev/* with zone_name demo.dev
# - vars.PUBLIC_BASE: https://<control hostname>
# - vars.SITE_DOMAIN: the parent used by <address>.<site domain>, such as demo.dev
# - d1_databases[0].database_id: filled in after D1 creation

# 3. storage
npx wrangler r2 bucket create nzip-content
npx wrangler d1 create nzip
#    -> paste the printed database_id into wrangler.local.jsonc

# 4. schema
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file schema.sql

# 5. owner token
openssl rand -hex 32                       # keep this — it's your CLI token
npx wrangler secret put NZIP_TOKEN --config wrangler.local.jsonc

# 6. alert destination (click the verification link before deploying)
npx wrangler email routing enable example.com
npx wrangler email routing addresses create operator@example.com
# Edit send_email and ALERT_EMAIL_* in wrangler.local.jsonc as shown below.

# 7. wildcard DNS (Cloudflare DNS dashboard)
#    Create a proxied `*` CNAME pointing to the control hostname.

# 8. first deploy
npx wrangler deploy --config wrangler.local.jsonc

Hostname model

nzip uses two public surfaces:

  • PUBLIC_BASE, such as https://share.demo.dev, is the exact control origin for owner APIs, notification enrollment, and legacy /<address> links.
  • SITE_DOMAIN, such as demo.dev, produces isolated artifact origins such as https://2a3f.demo.dev/.

The control path permanently redirects to the artifact hostname; it never serves artifact bytes. This separation gives every hosted site its own browser storage, service workers, host-only nzip unlock cookie, and default passkey relying-party ID. Artifact responses also send Origin-Agent-Cluster: ?1 so browsers keep each site in an origin-keyed agent cluster. Do not replace it with the obsolete Permissions-Policy: document-domain=() directive.

New site builds should use / as their deployment base; the address is no longer part of the asset path and no reservation/rebuild/repush cycle is needed. The Worker includes a compatibility fallback for existing artifacts built with /<address>/: when a prefixed file does not actually exist, it serves the corresponding root-relative file on the same isolated hostname.

For a Free-plan deployment, use a dedicated Cloudflare zone and keep artifact hosts one label below the zone apex. Universal SSL covers the apex and first-level wildcard. The required wildcard Worker route catches every otherwise-unmatched subdomain in that zone, so do not point it at a zone whose other subdomains must be served elsewhere unless you also add more-specific routes.

The relevant config shape is:

"routes": [
  { "pattern": "share.demo.dev", "custom_domain": true },
  { "pattern": "*.demo.dev/*", "zone_name": "demo.dev" }
],
"vars": {
  "PUBLIC_BASE": "https://share.demo.dev",
  "SITE_DOMAIN": "demo.dev"
}

Custom Domains do not accept wildcard hostnames. Create a proxied wildcard DNS record separately, then use a wildcard Worker route. In Cloudflare DNS, add * as a proxied CNAME to the control hostname (or another proxied target in the zone). Wait for Universal SSL to report an active certificate covering *.demo.dev before treating the deployment as ready.

Free-plan security rule

The Worker validates hostnames before dispatching any API or artifact request. As defense in depth, a single Free-plan WAF custom rule can reject malformed wildcard hosts before they consume a Worker request. For n.zip, create a custom rule named nzip: reject invalid site hosts, choose Block, and use this expression:

ends_with(lower(http.host), ".n.zip") and (
  len(http.host) ne 10 or
  not (substring(lower(http.host), 0, 1) in {"0" "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f"}) or
  not (substring(lower(http.host), 1, 2) in {"0" "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f"}) or
  not (substring(lower(http.host), 2, 3) in {"0" "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f"}) or
  not (substring(lower(http.host), 3, 4) in {"0" "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f"})
)

This avoids the paid matches regular-expression operator. Adapt both the suffix and expected hostname length for other zones. Keep control-plane security rules explicitly scoped to http.host eq "n.zip"; rules intended for all public traffic should include both the apex and valid site hostnames. The Worker's own rate-limit bindings remain authoritative for address enumeration and POST /__unlock, so the optional edge rule does not consume the Free plan's single rate-limit rule.

Free-plan RUM exclusion

Cloudflare can automatically inject its Real User Monitoring beacon into HTML on Free-plan zones. Hosted artifacts should remain byte-for-byte static and should not produce /cdn-cgi/rum requests during PWA reloads. Add a Configuration Rule named nzip: disable RUM on artifact hosts with this expression:

ends_with(lower(http.host), ".n.zip")

Set its action to Disable Real User Monitoring (RUM). Adapt the suffix for other zones. This keeps RUM available on the control origin while disabling it for every isolated artifact hostname. Use a Configuration Rule for this on the Free plan; per-host Web Analytics rules are not included there.

Enable Always Use HTTPS for the entire zone. Once every wildcard hostname has a valid certificate, enable HSTS with a real duration; begin without preload, verify the deployment, and only then consider a one-year duration plus preload. includeSubDomains now intentionally covers all isolated site origins.

For passkey applications, use the exact artifact hostname as the RP ID—normally location.hostname. Subdomains can deliberately select their registrable parent as a WebAuthn RP ID or set cookies for that parent domain, so per-site origins alone do not isolate those two credential mechanisms. Applications should use __Host- or otherwise host-only cookies and exact-host RP IDs. Before hosting mutually untrusted applications, register SITE_DOMAIN in the Public Suffix List and wait for the change to reach the browsers in scope. Until then, do not use the parent SITE_DOMAIN for application cookies or passkeys.

Free security alert email

Enumeration alerts use the Email Routing Worker binding, not the paid Email Sending product. Email Routing can send to a verified destination on the free plan. Enable it for the Worker domain, add and verify the operator address, then set these values in wrangler.local.jsonc:

npx wrangler email routing enable example.com
npx wrangler email routing addresses create operator@example.com

Click the verification link Cloudflare sends, then configure:

"send_email": [{ "name": "EMAIL", "destination_address": "operator@example.com" }],
"vars": {
  "ALERT_EMAIL_TO": "operator@example.com",
  "ALERT_EMAIL_FROM": "alerts@share.demo.dev"
}

Apply migrations/0002_security_alerts.sql, migrations/0003_security_notification_outbox.sql, migrations/0004_vault_descriptions.sql, migrations/0005_notifications.sql, migrations/0006_notification_pairing_window.sql, and migrations/0007_vault_defaults_and_app_origins.sql before deploying an upgraded Worker. After deployment, send a delivery test through the owner-authenticated endpoint:

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $NZIP_TOKEN" \
  https://share.demo.dev/api/security/test-alert

The Worker opens an incident when one scanner tries 20 distinct addresses in five minutes, or a distributed sweep reaches 128 addresses from 10 scanners with at least 90% misses. A rate-limit hit or a suspicious live-address hit confirms the incident. Duplicate email is suppressed unless severity increases or volume doubles, active incidents summarize hourly, and three quiet windows (15 minutes) resolve the incident. Probe rows are deduplicated by scanner/address, capped at 30 per scanner per minute in each Cloudflare location; 429 confirmations have a separate one-per-minute persistence cap. Alert payloads are written to a D1 outbox before delivery and retried by later cron runs with a stable notification ID. Telemetry contains no raw IP and is pruned after seven days. A daily activity digest is sent only when probes occurred in the preceding 24 hours.

Operational checks after deployment

  • Workers Metrics: request volume and errors. Shared-edge caching is intentionally disabled because exact and wildcard hostnames must never share an artifact response; budget for each public request to execute the Worker.
  • Workers Observability: filter event = "security.request"; Free retains Workers Logs for three days.
  • D1 Metrics → Row Metrics: rows written is the main enumeration-telemetry budget; Free currently includes 100,000 written rows per day.
  • Email Routing: the destination must remain verified. A successful test endpoint response means Cloudflare accepted the message for delivery.

Both routes, vars.PUBLIC_BASE, and vars.SITE_DOMAIN are required user-provided values. PUBLIC_BASE is the server URL passed to nzip auth; commit responses print the isolated site URL derived from SITE_DOMAIN.

When upgrading an existing deployment created before auth_version was added, apply its migration before deploying the new Worker:

cd worker
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0001_auth_version.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0002_security_alerts.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0003_security_notification_outbox.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0004_vault_descriptions.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0005_notifications.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0006_notification_pairing_window.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote --file migrations/0007_vault_defaults_and_app_origins.sql

Owner notifications

Notifications are fail-closed by default. Keep NOTIFY_ENABLED set to the string "false" while provisioning and applying the schema. Before deploying, copy the two notification rate-limit bindings from wrangler.jsonc into your ignored wrangler.local.jsonc, then configure one stable VAPID key pair:

# Generates a public/private P-256 VAPID key pair. Keep the private key private.
npx web-push generate-vapid-keys

# Enter the generated private key only at Wrangler's interactive prompt.
npx wrangler secret put VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY --config wrangler.local.jsonc

Set VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY to the generated public key and VAPID_SUBJECT to a stable mailto: or https: contact value in wrangler.local.jsonc. Populate WEB_PUSH_ORIGINS with a comma-separated list of exact HTTPS origins observed from the browsers you intend to pair. Do not add wildcards or the deployment's own origin. An empty or invalid allowlist rejects subscription attachment and delivery.

Apply the notification migration before deploying code that reads its tables:

cd worker
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote \
  --config wrangler.local.jsonc \
  --file migrations/0005_notifications.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote \
  --config wrangler.local.jsonc \
  --file migrations/0006_notification_pairing_window.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute nzip --remote \
  --config wrangler.local.jsonc \
  --file migrations/0007_vault_defaults_and_app_origins.sql
npx wrangler deploy --dry-run --config wrangler.local.jsonc
npx wrangler deploy --config wrangler.local.jsonc

NOTIFY_ENABLED is the delivery kill switch. Leave it "false" until the deployment configuration is valid and a real device is ready for the pairing flow.

To pair a phone, first open a 10-minute pairing window from an authenticated terminal. Then open the deployment root in its browser, tap the temporary pair footer action, and approve the displayed code:

nzip notify pair
nzip notify approve ABCD-1234 --name "Personal phone"

Wait for the browser footer to say paired before adding the site to the Home Screen. Open the installed app, tap notifications off, and accept the system permission request. If the installed app cannot recover the approved claim, remove it, repeat pairing in the browser, wait for paired, and install again.

After pairing succeeds, set NOTIFY_ENABLED to "true", redeploy, and use nzip notify test for the final end-to-end smoke test. Notification titles and bodies may appear on a lock screen; never put passwords, tokens, private URLs, or other sensitive data in them.

Cron gotcha: deploying the triggers block fails with a 403 (API error 10063) until the account has a workers.dev subdomain registered — even if the Worker only serves a custom domain. Open the Workers dashboard once to auto-create it, or PUT /accounts/{id}/workers/subdomain with {"subdomain":"<name>"}.

Required domain and wildcard route

  1. Add a dedicated zone to your Cloudflare account (registrar -> Cloudflare nameservers).
  2. In DNS, create a proxied wildcard record for *; do not leave the wildcard DNS-only.
  3. In wrangler.local.jsonc, set the exact control Custom Domain, wildcard Worker route, PUBLIC_BASE, SITE_DOMAIN, and your D1 database_id.
  4. Run npx wrangler deploy --dry-run --config wrangler.local.jsonc, then deploy. The exact Custom Domain provisions its own DNS and certificate; the wildcard route uses the wildcard DNS record from step 2.
  5. Verify that /<address> returns 308 to https://<address>.<site-domain>/, an unknown wildcard hostname returns 404, and /api/status is unavailable on artifact hostnames.

CLI

# from the repo root
deno install -g -A -f --config deno.json -n nzip cli/main.ts

nzip auth --server https://share.demo.dev --token <token-from-step-5>
nzip vault add personal          # slot 0x0
nzip vault add work              # slot 0x1
nzip site push ./docs personal:plan --ttl forever

Local development and test commands live in CONTRIBUTING.md.