The here.now alternative that is MCP-native and private by default.

Why people look for a here.now alternative

here.now is genuinely built for agents, so the reasons to look elsewhere are specific rather than general. The three that come up most:

• No MCP server. here.now installs through the agent-skills ecosystem and authenticates with a bearer API key. Its own agent card declares MCP is not a supported surface. If your stack is built around MCP tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Claude.ai), you want a host the agent calls as a native tool, not a skill wrapping an API key.
• No OAuth. here.now uses an email-code flow to mint an API key, then a long-lived bearer token. Teams that want a standard OAuth authorization grant rather than a copied key prefer that flow.
• Public by default. A here.now Site is a public {slug}.here.now URL with optional password protection. Some teams want the opposite default: nothing readable unless you hold the link.

Where here.now genuinely wins

This is the closest competitor on the market, and it does things Stacktree deliberately does not. Be clear about them:

• Drives. here.now ships private cloud storage for agents: memory, context, plans, assets, and agent-to-agent handoff via scoped share tokens. Stacktree hosts static HTML only and has no durable storage layer. If your agents need persistent state or to pass files between runs, here.now is the better fit.
• Proxy routes. A here.now static Site can proxy to an external API. Stacktree serves static HTML with no proxying.

Where Stacktree differs

Stacktree starts from a different premise on access and identity. The agent is the author, the link is the credential, and the controls live one tool call away.

• MCP-native. A real MCP server, so the agent calls publish_html as a native tool and update_site to replace in place. No skill wrapper, no copied API key.
• OAuth. Standard authorization grant rather than a long-lived bearer key.
• Private by default. Every URL is unguessable and acts as the credential. here.now is public-by-default with optional passwords.
• Email-domain gate. Restrict a link to verified addresses on a domain via magic link. here.now offers password gates, not domain gates.
• End-to-end encryption. Optional AES-GCM in the browser with the key in the URL fragment, so the server only ever stores ciphertext.
• Replace-in-place. One stable URL per artifact across every revision, so the link you shared yesterday shows today's version.

Who should pick which

Pick here.now if your agents need durable storage and handoff (Drives), or if you want to proxy a static site to an external API. Those are real capabilities Stacktree does not have.

Pick Stacktree if the agent should publish through MCP rather than an API key, if you want OAuth instead of a bearer token, and if the artifact should be private the moment it exists, gated by unguessable URL, password, email-domain, or end-to-end encryption.

Switching from here.now

The move is partial by design, because the two products overlap on hosting but not on storage.

• What transfers: your static Sites and your custom domains. Export the HTML and republish via publish_html or the dashboard, then point the domain at Stacktree on Pro (Cloudflare for SaaS).
• What you gain: an MCP server, OAuth, the magic-link email-domain gate, and optional end-to-end encryption, plus replace-in-place URLs.
• What is different: you do not get here.now Drives or proxy routes. If your agents rely on durable storage or handoff today, keep here.now for that layer and use Stacktree for the gated-publish layer.