Deploy to Cloud Engine

What This Is

A cloud engine is a user-owned slice of Internet Computer capacity, administered from a web console (by default https://opencloud.org). Each engine runs on a single subnet. This skill takes a project that already builds and gets it deployed onto that engine, from a coding agent.

This skill only covers the cloud-engine-specific steps: linking the CLI to the engine's console identity, and a subnet-targeted deploy. For everything else about the CLI (icp.yaml, recipes, environments, bindings, identities), load the icp-cli skill.

Check where you run before you write any code. The normal sign-in, icp identity link web, completes only when icp runs on the same machine as the user's browser (see Step 1.0). If you run in a remote or cloud sandbox, tell the user before you build anything, and ask them to start a local session instead: for example, the local environment when they start a session in the Claude desktop app, or a coding agent on their own computer (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor). A cloud session cannot move to their computer later, so ask before you build, not after, and wait for the answer. Continue in the sandbox only when the user has no local option. Then do the delegation handoff in Step 1.0 first, and build only after the sandbox CLI signs as the user: do not leave the sign-in for deploy time.

Before running any icp command you are unsure of, run icp <subcommand> --help (e.g. icp identity link --help, icp deploy --help) to confirm the command and flags exist. Do not infer flags. Authoritative reference: https://cli.internetcomputer.org/llms.txt

What You Need

Two values, and a third for some apps. Look for them first in icp.yaml or earlier in the conversation. One has a default; the others you must ask for: