Deploy MkDocs to thin.host

Build MkDocs (or Material for MkDocs) to site/ and deploy the docs to thin.host. thin.host serves the static files and gives you a live URL right away. Your agent can do every step for you through the thin.host MCP server, or you can run one curl command.

At a glance

Before you start

• Requires: Python 3 and pip.
• A thin.host account. Sign up, then create an API key under Settings (for curl and the local MCP server), or connect your agent with OAuth as shown in Quickstart (MCP).

Create a project (skip if you have one)

pip install mkdocs && mkdocs new my-docs

Set the base path

Until a domain points at it, a thin.host site lives under a sub-path: https://thin.host/s/<slug>/. MkDocs writes relative links between pages, but site_url must name the real address, sub-path included: it drives canonical links, the sitemap and the 404 page. Read it from an environment variable so one config serves both builds.

# mkdocs.yml
site_name: My Docs
site_url: !ENV [SITE_URL, 'https://docs.example.com/']

Pick the slug (my-site here) before you build the preview, and pass the same slug when you deploy.

Build

mkdocs build

The finished site is in site/. That folder is what you deploy.

Deploy from your agent (MCP)

Connect thin.host to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Codex or ChatGPT once (setup for each client), then ask:

Build this MkDocs project for thin.host with the slug my-site and publish the site/ folder.

With the local server (uvx thinhost-mcp) the agent runs the build and calls publish_website with the absolute path of site/; large builds are split across requests automatically. Later changes go out with update_website and sync=true, which also removes files the new build dropped.

The hosted connector (https://thin.host/mcp, used by claude.ai and ChatGPT) cannot read your disk. From a coding agent it uploads with the REST call below; otherwise it publishes from a public link to a zip or HTML file with publish_website_from_url.

Deploy with curl

cd site && zip -r ../site.zip . && cd -
curl -F file=@site.zip -F title="My MkDocs site" -F slug=my-site \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THINHOST_API_KEY" \
  https://thin.host/v1/websites/archive

The JSON response includes url, the live address (https://thin.host/s/my-site/). To redeploy, upload the new zip to the site's archive endpoint; pages and assets missing from it are removed:

curl -F file=@site.zip \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THINHOST_API_KEY" \
  https://thin.host/v1/websites/my-site/archive

A single upload can be up to 30 MB. See the REST API reference for every field.

Add a custom domain

1. Open the site in the dashboard and add your hostname under Custom Domains, for example www.example.com. A <name>.thin.host subdomain is free and works immediately.
2. Create the DNS record the dashboard shows: a CNAME pointing at cname.thin.host. TLS is issued automatically once DNS resolves.
3. Rebuild with the base path / (mkdocs build) and redeploy.

Pages on a custom domain get a canonical tag, a generated robots.txt and a sitemap.xml.

MkDocs notes

• Material for MkDocs builds the same way (pip install mkdocs-material, theme name material) and needs site_url for instant navigation. Material is in maintenance mode and does not support MkDocs 2.0, so pin mkdocs below 2.

FAQ

Sources

Commands and options checked against the official MkDocs docs on 2026-10-14:

• MkDocs: Getting started
• MkDocs configuration (site_url)
• Material for MkDocs: Creating your site

Other frameworks: all deploy guides. Coming from another host? Compare thin.host.