How do I share a Quarto HTML report?

Render it (`quarto render report.qmd --to html`), then drag the resulting `report.html` and its `report_files/` folder into Comma, or PATCH the HTML to the API. You get one URL that renders the document with its plots, tables and interactive widgets intact.

Why does my Quarto HTML look broken when someone else opens it?

Because a default render is not one file. Quarto writes `report.html` next to a `report_files/` directory holding Bootstrap, the syntax-highlighting CSS, Plotly/Leaflet bundles and every figure. Send the .html alone and the recipient gets unstyled text. Either render with `embed-resources: true` or publish the whole folder.

Should I just use embed-resources instead?

It works, and it is the right answer for a one-off email. It also inlines every asset as base64, so a notebook-heavy document crosses tens of megabytes fast, and you still end up with a file per version sitting in someone's Downloads. Publishing gives you one stable URL, revision history, and a place for the feedback.

Do Observable JS cells and interactive widgets still work?

Yes. Report HTML renders with scripts enabled inside a sandboxed iframe, and the assets in `report_files/` upload alongside the document with their relative references rewritten — which is the exact step that fails over `file://`.

Can I re-render on a schedule?

Yes — that is what routines are for. Point one at the render command, PATCH the same report id, and the URL you already shared shows the new numbers with the old ones kept as revisions.

Share a Quarto HTML report

Quarto's HTML output is the nicest thing to happen to reproducible reporting in years. It is also, by default, not a file — it is a file plus a directory:

report.html
report_files/
  libs/bootstrap/…
  libs/quarto-html/…
  figure-html/cell-3-output-1.png

Which is why the usual sharing attempt fails in a specific, recognizable way: you attach report.html to an email, and the person who opens it sees your prose in Times New Roman with no plots. Every asset reference resolved to a folder that never left your machine.

Publish the render

quarto render report.qmd --to html

Then drag report.html and report_files/ (or a zip of the output directory) into the app:

report.html becomes the report body.
Everything in report_files/ uploads as assets, with the relative references rewritten to the uploaded copies.
Scripts run inside a sandboxed iframe (allow-scripts, no allow-same-origin), so Plotly charts, Leaflet maps, tabsets and the code-folding toggles behave the way they do locally.

Or render self-contained and PATCH it

For a pipeline, one file is easier to move:

quarto render report.qmd --to html -M embed-resources:true

curl -fsS -X PATCH "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports/$REPORT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html report.html \
        --arg title "Weekly model report — $(date +%F)" '{title: $title, html: $html}')"

embed-resources: true inlines the CSS, JS and figures as data URIs. Watch the size: the entry HTML limit is 5 MB, and a document with a dozen Plotly figures gets there quickly. Above that, publish the folder instead of inlining — assets get 25 MB per file.

The part that actually matters

A rendered document is a monologue. The reason it gets pasted into Slack is that someone needs to say "this cohort split looks wrong" — and Slack is where that sentence goes to die.

Anchored threads sit on the paragraph, the table row or the figure they are about. See commenting on HTML.
Revisions — PATCH the same report id on each render and last month's version stays reachable, so "did this number move?" is a diff.
Access per report — private, team-wide, domain-gated, or a named list. See the sharing model.

On a schedule

A Quarto report that summarizes live data is stale the day after you render it. A routine runs the render on a cron, PATCHes the same id, and notifies the people subscribed to that report — so the link in last quarter's email still points at current numbers.

Limits

Entry HTML: 5 MB. Assets: 25 MB per file, 250 MB and 500 files total.
60 requests/minute per token.

Try it

Comma is free — unlimited reports, unlimited commenters, unlimited revision history.

Publish a Quarto render →