Downloadable CSVs / Public assets?

[sofia5]

I'm trying to provide downloadable CSVs by adding:

<a href="/public/dataExample.csv" download="data_example.csv" >`CSV ⬇️`</a>

and adding the dataExample.csv as a file in the repo.

Locally it works well, and I get the file as expected. However, once it's deployed, I'm not getting the file but the entire page (HTML and CSS). What do I need to do to fix this? Is there a way to make sure what's working locally, also works when it's deployed?