Nicholas Clooney

Preview production drafts locally

Draft posts stay out of production

We now set ELEVENTY_ENV for each npm script that ships with Subspace Builder. When you run npm run build, Eleventy filters out any Markdown files marked with draft: true. That keeps unfinished stories from leaking onto the live site.

Need to double-check how the site behaves in production? Use the new npm run prod command. It spins up Eleventy’s dev server with the production environment, so you can review the published experience locally while still enjoying hot reloads.

What changed

  • Eleventy computes eleventyExcludeFromCollections using the current ELEVENTY_ENV, skipping draft templates whenever the value is production.
  • package.json scripts now cover the full workflow: npm run dev for drafting, npm run prod for production previews, and npm run build for deployable output.
  • The README calls out the new scripts so the environment-driven behaviour is easy to adopt.

This groundwork sets us up for smoother release testing—and it keeps your editorial pipeline tidy.