Preview a local build

The scenario

You generated a static site or a front-end build — Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy, vite build, create-react-app, Angular, Astro — and you want to look at the real output before shipping it. Opening index.html over file:// breaks absolute paths, routing and fetch calls. A dev server (vite dev, webpack serve) shows your source, not the artifact you are about to deploy.

servd serves the built directory over HTTP, exactly like a static host would.

One command

servd --static=./dist --port=3000

Open http://localhost:3000/. On startup servd prints what it resolved, so you can confirm the right folder is mounted:

servd 0.1.0 listening on 0.0.0.0:3000 (all IPv4 interfaces)
Hosts: unrestricted
  static / -> /you/project/dist

What you get for free

Directory indexes. /docs redirects to /docs/ and serves docs/index.html when present, so relative links and canonical URLs stay stable.
Realistic caching. Files are served with Cache-Control: no-cache plus a weak ETag and Last-Modified, so repeat loads return fast 304 Not Modified — the behavior a CDN or origin would give you.
Compression. Pre-compressed file.gz / file.br siblings are served directly; otherwise compressible text is gzipped on the fly, with a correct Vary: Accept-Encoding.
Path safety. .., //, backslashes and NUL bytes are rejected, and files are opened through a rooted handle, so the server cannot be tricked into reading outside ./dist.

Handy variations

Serve several folders and overlay them at one mount (first existing file wins):

servd --static=./dist --static=/assets=./public/assets --port=3000

Restrict which Host headers are answered, useful when a preview is reachable from the network:

servd --static=./dist --host=localhost --port=3000

If the output is a single-page app rather than a multi-page site, use --spa instead so client-side routes fall back to index.html.