Firebase Hosting Basics

Iron Law

NO FIREBASE HOSTING DEPLOY WITHOUT WORKLOAD IDENTITY FEDERATION.

CI/CD uses GitHub Actions + WIF — never long-lived service account JSON keys. The GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable must never point to a key file in any workflow or .env file.

Project Context

Before using this skill:

• Check CLAUDE.md for the project's build tool and output path (e.g. dist/)
• Confirm the firebase.json location (typically repo root)
• Confirm whether a hosting block already exists in firebase.json

Build the web app before deploying:

# Adjust command to match your project's build setup
npm run build
# Confirm the output directory matches firebase.json "public" setting

What are you doing?

Configuring firebase.json? → Load references/configuration.md → Set "public" to the project's actual build output directory

Deploying live or to a preview channel? → Load references/deploying.md → For CI/CD with GitHub Actions: Load references/ci-cd-github-actions.md

Adding env vars for project ID or WIF? → Must sync across all env files (.env, .env.staging, .env.production) in the SAME PR → Run the project's env-sync check before committing

References

• Configuration: references/configuration.md
• Deploying: references/deploying.md
• CI/CD (GitHub Actions + WIF): references/ci-cd-github-actions.md

Related Skills

• angular-spa — Angular build setup; produces the static output
• firebase-basics — Firebase CLI auth, project setup, npx discipline
• gcp-cloud-run — WIF setup patterns reused for Firebase Hosting CI/CD
• deployment-engineer agent — for complex multi-environment pipeline setup

Local Development

Firebase Hosting has no local emulator equivalent — the project's dev server handles this:

# Serve locally (no Firebase needed) — adjust to project's dev command
npm run start

# Or test the production build locally
npx -y firebase-tools@latest emulators:start --only hosting
# Serves the build output at http://localhost:5000