Name resolution

routeup resolves the route name from the first source that is set. Positional arguments have one additional project-scoping rule; environment and config names are used literally.

Source precedence

1. CLI argument        routeup serve example-app
2. Environment         ROUTEUP_NAME=example-app
3. Config              "name" in routeup.json or the package.json routeup block
4. Directory basename  working directory name (last-resort fallback)

Flags and env override config; config provides the default. When none of the above are set, routeup uses the basename of the current working directory as the route name — so running from ~/projects/example-app gives https://example-app.localhost automatically without any config.

Positional-name scoping

A positional name containing a dot is taken literally. A positional bare name (no dots) is prefixed with the project name from config. With no project in scope, a bare positional name is used as-is. ROUTEUP_NAME and the config’s own name are always literal.

project = example-app (from config)

routeup serve              -> example-app  (uses the project name)
routeup serve api          -> api.example-app      (bare name, scoped under the project)
routeup serve api.example-app    -> api.example-app      (dotted, literal)
routeup serve api.other    -> api.other      (dotted, literal, not scoped to example-app)

no project in scope:
routeup serve foo          -> foo            (bare name used as-is)

ROUTEUP_NAME=api routeup serve -> api        (environment name is literal)

Local vs public names

This rule produces the route name. Locally any depth works (api.example-app → https://api.example-app.localhost). Public hosts must be one label under the server’s namespace, so routeup normalizes dots to hyphens when exposing (api.example-app → public label api-example-app). See Routes and Tokens.