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Packages: organize your coding guidelines

What are Packages?​

A Package is a curated collection of recipes and standards grouped together. Packages organize your coding guidelines in a way that matches how your team actually works—whether by technology, domain, team, or architectural layer.

Instead of managing dozens of individual items, packages let you group related guidelines and distribute them as a single unit.

How to Distribute Packages​

There are two ways to distribute packages to your team:

  1. Install locally via CLI - Download packages directly to your local machine (no Git required)
  2. Distribute to Git repositories - Push packages to your repositories (requires Git configuration)

These are alternative distribution methods—you can choose the approach that fits your workflow. You don't need to use both.

Creating Packages​

Create packages through the web interface:

  1. Navigate to Packages in the Packmind UI
  2. Click Create Package
  3. Provide a name and description
  4. Select recipes and standards to include
  5. Save the package

You can also add items to packages automatically when creating recipes or standards via the MCP server by including the packageSlugs parameter.

Using Packages​

Once you've created packages, you can distribute them using either of these methods:

Option 1: Install Locally​

Download package content directly to your machine using the CLI:

packmind-cli install --list
packmind-cli install backend-api frontend-web

This creates the appropriate files for your AI coding assistant on your local machine without requiring Git.

See the CLI documentation for details.

Option 2: Distribute to Repositories​

Push packages to your Git repositories through the web interface:

  1. Navigate to Packages
  2. Select packages to distribute
  3. Choose target paths
  4. Click Distribute

All recipes and standards in the package are committed together to your repository.

Learn more in the Distribution documentation.

Via MCP Server​

AI agents can work with packages using these tools:

  • list_packages - View available packages
  • get_package_details - Inspect package contents

When creating recipes or standards via MCP using save_recipe or save_standard, use the packageSlugs parameter to add them to packages automatically.

See the MCP Server reference for details.

Package Versions​

Packages are dynamic collections without their own versions. When you distribute a package, it always includes the latest version of each recipe and standard it contains.

To see which repositories have outdated versions, check the distribution overview.