Build Pipeline
How `next build` Converts Routes into Static Output
May 15, 20265 min readRipplica Labs
See what the build pipeline is doing when it walks routes and prepares deployable assets.
The build step has two jobs
First, Next.js compiles your React code, page files, and styles into optimized assets. Second, it pre-renders pages that can be generated ahead of time, including routes powered by `getStaticProps` and `getStaticPaths`.
When the build completes, Next.js has enough information to ship HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and route data that the deployed site will use in the browser.
Why this matters for deployment
Because the expensive work happened earlier, your hosting platform mostly serves files instead of running page-generation logic on every request.
That separation is a core architecture idea: author locally, compile once, deploy globally.