Github pages deploy verification

GitHub Pages deploy verification

Problem

Two failure modes when verifying that a deploy is live via curl:

1. False-positive poll predicate. Polling until curl ... | grep -q "<selector>"; do sleep; done succeeds instantly if the selector existed before the deploy too. The loop exits on the OLD content; you think you've verified the new state and you haven't.

2. Blocked timing chain. sleep 35 && curl ... looks reasonable but the Claude Code harness blocks long leading sleeps inside Bash to prevent dead polling. Worse, even short sleep N && curl followed by additional pipes can hit "Blocked: sleep N followed by:" errors that cancel parallel tool calls.

Both bugs hit one session inside ~30 minutes. They are not in the same family but they ride the same task.

Context / Trigger Conditions

Any of:

• About to push to a branch where merge = production deploy (GitHub Pages legacy mode, Netlify Git, Vercel Git, etc.)
• The platform's own deploy-status API is known to lag (e.g., gh api repos/.../pages/builds/latest can report stale building long after content is live, or report built before the CDN catches up)
• A task isn't "done" until you've confirmed the new HTML/CSS/JS is served, not just merged

Solution

Pick the poll predicate correctly

The string you grep for must be content that did not exist pre-deploy. Concretely:

• ✅ Grep for a new CSS rule, new class, new token value, new copy string, new commit hash echoed in a meta tag.
• ❌ Grep for an element selector (.case-footnote, <h1>) that already shipped — the loop exits on the cached old content.
• ❌ Grep for a token name (--accent-dim) when only its value changed — the name was there before too.

Rule: git diff HEAD~1 -- index.html | grep '^+' produces candidate strings. Pick the one most unique to the diff.

Avoid blocked timing chains

In Claude Code's Bash tool, do not write:

sleep 35 && curl ...    # often blocked

Use one of these instead:

Pattern A — synchronous until-loop with a check command:

until curl -s https://your.site/ | grep -q "<new-content-marker>"; do sleep 5; done
echo "--- LIVE ---"
curl -s https://your.site/ | grep -E "<verification-grep>" | head -20

Pattern B — background until-loop (preferred for slow CDNs):

Same command, but invoked with run_in_background: true. You get a completion notification; do not poll yourself.

Three-line template

# 1. Push and capture the unique marker
git push origin <branch>
# (mentally note: which line in the diff is unique to this push?)

# 2. Poll on that exact marker
until curl -s <prod-url> | grep -q "<unique-marker>"; do sleep 5; done

# 3. Run the broader verification grep
curl -s <prod-url> | grep -E "(<token>|<class>|<copy-string>)" | head -10

Verification

The poll predicate is correct when:

• curl <url> | grep "<marker>" returns NOTHING immediately after push (proves the marker is genuinely new).
• The same command returns the marker once the loop exits (proves the deploy reached the CDN).

If the loop exits in less than ~5 seconds for a platform that typically takes 30+ seconds, your predicate matched pre-existing content. Re-pick the marker.

Example

Session 2026-05-27, the author's public azimuth skill repo, fixing WCAG AA contrast on index.html:

First attempt (wrong predicate):

until curl -s https://mrbinnacle.github.io/azimuth/ | grep -q "case-footnote"; do sleep 5; done

Loop exited instantly. .case-footnote existed in the OLD HTML — only its color value changed. False positive.

Second attempt (correct predicate):

until curl -s https://mrbinnacle.github.io/azimuth/ | grep -q "overflow-x: auto"; do sleep 5; done

overflow-x: auto was a brand-new declaration on .v-table-wrap introduced in the same commit. Loop waited ~30 seconds, then exited on real new content. Verified.

Notes

• The gh api repos/.../pages/builds/latest endpoint is informational, not authoritative. It can read building after the site is live, and built before the CDN catches up. Always verify via curl <prod-url> instead.
• Custom domains and CDN edges can delay propagation further (Cloudflare, Fastly). The poll loop handles this transparently — just give it the right marker.
• Same pattern works for Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, S3+CloudFront, and any other static-site CDN. The harness rules apply identically.
• If the deploy is gated on a CI workflow (not Pages legacy auto-build), poll the workflow status via gh run watch before the curl loop, then run the curl loop to confirm content propagation separately.
• This skill complements harness-level guidance that tells you not to chain sleeps; this skill tells you what to do instead for deploy verification specifically.