I find that I can only deploy shinyapps and learnr tutorials to shinyapps.io when they are in the inst/ directory of a package. I don't have to build the package, just put the apps there. If I try to deploy from a non-package project, I get a request to provide the public URL of the RStudio Connect server and I haven't been able to construct it or find a mention of it online. Similarly, I've missed any documentation about needed to deploy from an package/inst/ directory, even in the many tutorials I've read through online. I'll mention that I have been using shinyapps.io from its first launch. I noticed this problem a year ago, but since my work-around worked, I didn't follow up. But I've just installed new everything and thought at this point it would be nice to resolve the mystery.