View as Markdown

Public Folders

Publishing a folder gives it a public URL, lists it in the community and credits it to your profile. A share link hides one file behind a secret URL; a public folder puts a whole folder where anyone, including search engines, can find it.

Publish a folder

Right-click a top-level folder in the file tree and choose Make Public. The folder gets a public address straight away:

plaintext
https://www.monofile.ai/s/aBcD1234wXyZ

Two rules shape what you can publish:

  • Folders only. You cannot make a single file public. Put it in a folder, or send a share link instead.

  • Top-level folders only. A public folder is a root folder in your workspace, published together with everything nested inside it. If a subfolder is already published separately, publishing its parent asks you to confirm, then folds the child shares into the new one.

From the same menu you can Copy Link, Open Preview to see the page a visitor sees, or Make Private to unpublish.

What a visitor sees

The public page is a read-only version of the editor, with a file tree on the left and the selected file on the right.

VisibleNot visible
Every file and subfolder inside the published folderAnything outside that folder
The contents of those files, rendered in the right editorYour other folders, chats, keys or drafts
Your profile name, linked to your public profileYour email address
View count, vote score, comments and fork countWho viewed the folder
A Fork to My Files button and Download ZIPAny way to edit your files

Visitors do not need an account to browse, read files, deep-link to one file inside the folder, or download the whole folder as a zip. They do need one to vote, comment or fork.

Two things come from the folder's contents and have no setting. The description on community cards comes from the folder's README.md, or from the first markdown file if there is no README. The community browser labels a folder with a SKILL.md at its root as a skill, which is how you publish an agent skill.

What publishing sets in motion

Making a folder public also:

  • lists the folder in the community browser and in the activity feed,

  • opens votes, comments and forks on the folder,

  • indexes every file inside it for community semantic search, see Discovery and Search,

  • adds the page to the sitemap, so search engines can crawl and index it.

Expiry and unpublishing

A share can carry an expiry date; after it passes, the URL stops working. Make Private unpublishes immediately. The URL stops resolving, the folder leaves the community browser and the feed, and Monofile removes its community search entries. Your files are untouched, and republishing later gives you a fresh URL.

Forks that other people already made are theirs and stay in their workspaces. See Forking.

Public folderShare link
What it publishesA top-level folder and everything in itOne file
URL/s/<token>/l/<token>
Who can find itAnyone, including search enginesOnly people you send the URL to
Listed in the communityYesNo
Votes, comments, forksYesNo
In community searchYesNo
Password or pinned versionNoYes

From an agent or the CLI

share_folder and unshare_folder publish and unpublish over the API and need shares:write; get_folder_share_status needs shares:read.

POST/api/tools/share_folder
{"folderId":"/Projects/handbook"}

The CLI has one share command for both kinds of sharing, and it picks by what the path points at:

bash
monofile share /Projects/handbook          # a folder, so this publishes it
monofile share /Projects/handbook --status
monofile unshare /Projects/handbook

In a team workspace the organization owns the share, so any member can publish or unpublish it. In a personal workspace only you can.

Next steps

Referenced byCommunityCore ConceptsDiscovery and SearchForkingProfiles and FollowingQuickstartShare LinksSharing and CommunityTroubleshooting
715 words