ENTITY

Pagefind

Properties1
tagspagefind, site-search, static-sites, wasm, cloudcannon

1 min read

Pagefind

Type: product | Domain relevance: The build-time static Site Search engine the wiki was missing — WASM index, no server, no hosted crawl.

Summary

Pagefind (CloudCannon) indexes a static site after the SSG runs and writes a search bundle into the output. The browser loads WASM + chunked index files; there is no search server and no crawl quota. Getting Started with Pagefind (v1.5.2 at fetch) is the official getting-started path: drop in the prebuilt UI, run npx pagefind --site public on the build output, deploy the bundle with the site.

This is the documented build-time pole of Site Search, opposite Site Search 360 (hosted crawl) and Algolia (API-backed).

Key Facts

  • Post-build indexer; indexes HTML output, not source.
  • No server component; --serve is preview only.
  • Prebuilt <pagefind-modal> UI plus a JS search API.
  • Dev servers that don’t write output will not show search until you index the build dir.
  • Run after every production build.

In the Sources

SourceContext
Getting Started with PagefindOfficial quick start.

Entities: Site Search 360, Astro Concepts: Site Search, Web Architecture & Scalability, Rendering Strategies (CSR / SSR / SSG / ISR / RSC)