/wix-manage

Upload a Website or HTML Files

The user has a finished website as files — hand-written HTML, a static build, a zip, or the output of an AI site builder — and wants it live on Wix as a new site. There are two ways to get there.

The two paths

Path A — hand the user the drop page. One URL; the user uploads in the browser and gets a live site. This works for any agent and any user — it's the default. Reach for it whenever you can't clearly do Path B.

Path B — publish the files yourself. Three calls put the site live without the user touching a browser. Available only when both hold: you can read the file bytes (you generated them here, or they're reachable from where you run), and you can do a multipart/form-data file upload from a shell (curl or equivalent). Reaching APIs only through the Wix API-call/execute-API tools does not count — they can't upload a local file.

Prefer Path B when you can genuinely do it — the user gets a live site without uploading anything themselves. Otherwise, and by default, take Path A. Decide honestly: if you can't read the bytes or can't upload from a shell, hand over the drop page rather than attempting Path B and reporting an upload you couldn't perform.

Path A — hand the user the drop page

Send the user here:

https://www.wix.com/headless/drop?utm_campaign=mcp&agent=<your-agent-id>

Keep utm_campaign=mcp (the drop-flow referral tag — don't change it) and set agent to your own identifier — the coding agent or tool you are (e.g. claude-code, cursor, codex-cli, windsurf, github-copilot, or your product's name). Hand the URL with agent filled in and both params intact. There the user drags in their files (no login), Wix hosts them immediately on a live URL, and a banner offers to sign in and keep the site. Tell them the requirements from What the upload accepts so it doesn't fail on the first try.

Path B — publish the files yourself

Run every call from your shell with curl — not the Wix API-call/execute-API tools. The upload (step 2) and the download in Add a backend move a file to or from disk; those tools proxy JSON and can't (hand-building a multipart body inline silently drops every image and font). Create and release are plain JSON and would work through anything, but the upload needs a real file client anyway, so keep it all in the shell. None of steps 1–3 (or the download) need auth — they're anonymous. Only claim needs the user's identity.

Base URL: https://www.wixapis.com/headless-business-setup

Generate anonymousId yourself — any UUID, once per site, not once per request — and reuse it (with the returned metaSiteId) for every call for that site, including later changes (Iterate). Finish within one hour of step 1: after that the record expires and every later step, claim included, returns 404.

1. Create the site

curl -sS -X POST \
  "https://www.wixapis.com/headless-business-setup/v1/headless-business/anonymous/$ANONYMOUS_ID"

{ "metaSiteId": "f0ad8672-09e9-4111-b6fe-070c70bd2df5",
  "projectId":  "54528d34-b23c-4fbe-b07d-2c522350abd7" }

Keep both: metaSiteId addresses the site in every later call; projectId builds the save link in step 3b.

2. Upload the files

One multipart/form-data request carrying every file. Each file is a part named files whose filename is its path relative to the site root — that is how subdirectories survive; with curl, set it explicitly with ;filename= whenever it isn't just the basename. A single .zip part works too — send it alone and it's unpacked server-side, a single wrapping folder stripped.

AGENT=claude-code   # ← replace with your own identifier (see note below)
curl -sS -X POST \
  "https://www.wixapis.com/headless-business-setup/v1/headless-business/anonymous/$ANONYMOUS_ID/$META_SITE_ID/upload?campaign=mcp&agent=$AGENT" \
  -F "files=@index.html;filename=index.html" \
  -F "files=@assets/styles.css;filename=assets/styles.css" \
  -F "files=@assets/logo.png;filename=assets/logo.png"

{ "uploadId": "03244542-d820-42f6-acfa-166c6658b1a6" }

Keep campaign=mcp (the drop-flow referral tag — don't change it) and set agent=$AGENT to your own identifier: the coding agent or tool performing this drop, so the upload is attributed to the real client. Use a short, stable, lowercase-hyphenated slug — e.g. claude-code, cursor, codex-cli, windsurf, github-copilot, or your product's name; if you genuinely can't name yourself, use unknown-agent. Send the same agent on every upload for this site, matching the agent you'd use in Path A. Nothing is live yet; this only stages and validates.

3. Release — the site goes live

curl -sS -X POST \
  "https://www.wixapis.com/headless-business-setup/v1/headless-business/anonymous/$ANONYMOUS_ID/$META_SITE_ID/release" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"uploadId\":\"$UPLOAD_ID\"}"

{ "siteUrl": "https://instant-hguwrvtcrniw-headlessstack-140d.wix-site-host.com" }

The site is live at siteUrl immediately.

Iterate while anonymous (don't create a new site)

Simple static changes — new copy, another page, a different look — happen here, while the site is still anonymous, and this is the only window for them: re-run steps 2–3 with the same anonymousId and metaSiteId; the upload replaces the site's contents and siteUrl stays the same. Send the full file set each time (release replaces, it doesn't merge). Don't go back to step 1 — a fresh site per change leaves the user a trail of abandoned sites on changing URLs; only create another for a genuinely separate site.

So iterate first, claim last: refine on the same ids until the site is right, then finish. Once claimed, these anonymous endpoints stop working and the only way to keep changing the site in code is a headless project (Keep building).

When the site is final, finish based on identity:

• You have the user's access token — claim it into their account (step 4). Don't stop at a temporary site: an unclaimed site expires, so saving it is part of publishing, not an extra favour to ask about.

• You have no user identity — stop here; this is a finished, legitimate result (exactly what the drop page produces for every visitor). Give the user siteUrl plus the save link, which is how the site survives:

  https://www.wix.com/live-headless-site/{projectId}?anonymousId={anonymousId}

  That page shows the site with a countdown and signs the user in to keep it. Treat the link as a secret — whoever opens it while signed in to Wix claims the site into their account — so give it only to the user who asked.

4. Put the site in the user's account

curl -sS -X POST \
  "https://www.wixapis.com/headless-business-setup/v1/headless-business/anonymous/$ANONYMOUS_ID/$META_SITE_ID/claim" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN"

Returns {} on success; needs a user or account-level identity (else UNAUTHENTICATED). It consumes the anonymous record, so it's the last call that works against these endpoints — do it after the release, never before.

The site's URL changes here. The step-3 host stops resolving — the free host is scoped to the owning account and re-minted under the user's. Read the new one in step 5; never repeat the step-3 URL after a claim.

5. Read the site's final URL

Query Sites filtered to the HEADLESS namespace — headless sites are omitted from the default query, so the filter is required, and an id filter is rejected, so match the id yourself.

curl -sS -X POST "https://www.wixapis.com/site-list/v2/sites/query" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":{"filter":{"namespace":"HEADLESS"},"cursorPaging":{"limit":100}}}'

Find the entry whose id equals your metaSiteId, read viewUrl (page with metadata.cursors.next if needed):

{ "id": "f0ad8672-09e9-4111-b6fe-070c70bd2df5",
  "displayName": "Snake", "published": true, "namespace": "HEADLESS",
  "viewUrl": "https://instant-hguwrvtcrniw-ayalg5-1406.wix-site-host.com/" }

Give the user two links: viewUrl for the live site, and its dashboard at https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/{metaSiteId} to manage it.

What the upload accepts, and how it fails

The requirements below apply to both paths — an upload that breaks them is why a release never happens:

• A top-level HTML file is required. It needn't be named index.html (a lone top-level HTML of any name becomes the homepage), but once there's more than one, an index.html must be among them.
• 3 MB per file, 20 MB per site.
• Static files only — HTML, CSS, JS, images, fonts. Framework source that needs a build step (a package.json, React/Vue sources) must be built first; upload the build output.

On Path B, failures come back as HTTP 400 with a code in details.applicationError.code: MISSING_INDEX_HTML (add a top-level HTML), FILE_TOO_LARGE (a file over 3 MB), TOTAL_TOO_LARGE (bundle over 20 MB). A 404 after step 1 means the one-hour window passed or the site was already claimed — start again from step 1.

If Path B fails for any reason you can't quickly fix — a rejected upload, an error, a call you can't make — fall back to Path A: give the user the drop-page link so they can finish in the browser. Never leave them with a failed publish and no way forward; the drop page reaches the same result without the step that broke.

Keep building: add a backend when you need one

The drop flow publishes static files. When the site needs a real backend — stores, payments, bookings, a CMS, members, forms — it becomes a Wix Headless project. This is a solution the user chooses when the need appears, not a required step: a static site is a finished result on its own.

Offer it once the site is claimed/owned and you're in a coding environment with a shell. It keeps the same site, appId and URL (the downloaded project already carries a wix.config.json binding it), and is released with the Wix CLI from then on:

curl -sSL -o project.zip \
  "https://www.wix.com/_api/wixstro-deployments/v1/instant-sites/$META_SITE_ID/download.zip"
unzip project.zip -d project      # index.html + assets + wix.config.json

Then follow https://wix.com/headless/skill.md: it turns the static files into a headless project (@wix/sdk + the business solutions the site needs), bound to the same site.

This is the only way to keep changing a claimed site in code, and it's why it needs wix login: re-releasing to a claimed site is authenticated and file-based, and an authenticated file operation needs the token in your shell (via wix login), not injected into a tool — the API-call/execute-API tools carry the auth but can't do file operations. There's no lighter "re-upload static to my claimed site" shortcut.

Route the request correctly

• You can't read the files, can't make HTTP calls, or have no shell (API-call/execute-API tools only, which can't upload a file) — Path A, the drop page. It's also the default whenever Path B isn't clearly available, and the fallback whenever Path B fails partway — hand over the link, don't leave the user stuck.
• Files you generated here or can read, and you can upload from a shell — Path B. If you hold the user's identity, claim it into their account and return the live URL + dashboard.
• A change to a site you published this way here — iterate in place on the same ids.
• A published anonymous site the user wants to keep — steps 4–5 with their identity, else the step-3 save link.
• A claimed site that now needs a backend (stores, bookings, CMS, members, forms) — add a backend.
• Migrating a live site/store from another platform by URL, or CSV/TSV exports — Site Import.
• Adding HTML, an embed, or code to an existing Wix site — not this recipe (that's custom code in the editor).
• Images, videos, or documents for a site — Upload Media to Wix.

Don't create the site with other tools (meta-site templates, headless-business provisioning) — those make an empty site, not a published copy of the user's files.