Docs / Restore in Local

Restore a site on your computer

Want to edit a site you published earlier but no longer have the files for? Bring it back to your machine and let your AI agent make the change.

If you still have the project folder, you don't need this — just ask your agent to publish again. This page is for the other case: you published a site, the local folder is gone (a new computer, a cleaned-up Downloads folder), and now you want to change it. You do two small things; your agent does the rest.

You'll need an AI coding agent This flow uses an agent that can work with files and run commands — Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or similar. If you only have a chat assistant (ChatGPT, Claude.ai) that hands you HTML, skip this and use Update site in the console to paste or upload your new content instead.

The quickest way: the console does it for you

Open console.publish.my, find the site, and choose Restore in Local from its ⋮ menu. The pop-up walks you through the same two steps below and hands you a prompt already filled in with your site's ID — copy it and you're done. The rest of this page explains what that prompt does.

Step 1 — Download your site

In the console, use Download site (or the button inside Restore in Local). You'll get a .tar.gz — unzip it into a folder. That folder is your site, with index.html at its top.

Only you can download your site The download is tied to your account, so it only ever works for sites you own — there's no way to pull down someone else's. That's why this one step happens in the console, by you, rather than by the agent.

Step 2 — Hand it to your agent

Open your AI agent in that folder, paste one of the prompts below, and describe the change you want. Pick based on whether you're changing the existing site or making a new one.

Update the same site

Keeps the same address. The prompt asks the agent to recreate a small .publish-my.json file so it knows which site to update. The console fills in your real project ID; here it's the example 88vk3mqtxz:

Prompt — update the same siteI want to edit my existing website and re-publish it to the same address. I downloaded it as a .tar.gz from publish.my — it is in this folder. Please: 1. Unpack the .tar.gz here. The files inside are my site (index.html is the homepage). 2. Create a file named .publish-my.json at the top of the folder, exactly: {"service":"publish.my","project_id":"88vk3mqtxz","url":"https://88vk3mqtxz.publish.my","deploy":"https://api.publish.my/v1/deploy","instructions":"https://publish.my/llms.txt"} 3. Make the change I describe below. 4. Re-publish to the SAME site by reading https://publish.my/llms.txt and following "Updating a site". If you do not have my key, follow "Reconnect a live site" — I will click the confirmation email. My change: <describe what you want changed>

Publish as a new site

Starts from the same files but publishes a separate site at a brand-new address — the original is untouched. No special instructions needed: unpack your download, make your change, then use the normal publish prompt.

Prompt — new sitePublish this project with https://publish.my

Why the `.publish-my.json` file?

When your agent first published the site, it left a small .publish-my.json note in your folder recording the site's ID — that's how a later "publish again" knows where to send your changes. Files whose names start with a dot are stripped on upload for safety, so that note isn't part of what you download. Recreating it (step 2 of the update prompt) restores that link, and from then on a plain "publish again" works as usual.

Lost your key? That's fine If your agent doesn't have your publish key, the update prompt tells it to reconnect: it requests a confirmation email sent only to the address that owns the site, you click it, and the agent gets a fresh key. See Getting started for more on reconnecting.