Manifest

A manifest is the metadata file that describes your package to the package manager and registry — its name, version, entry point, dependencies, scripts, and more. In Node, this is always package.json.

Common manifest fields

Field	Example	Purpose
`name`	`"express"`	Package name (used in `require()` / `import`)
`version`	`"4.18.2"`	Semver version
`type`	`"module"` or `"commonjs"`	Module system
`main` / `exports`	`"./dist/index.js"`	Entry point(s)
`scripts`	`{ "start": "node app.js" }`	Runable commands
`dependencies`	`{ "express": "^4.18.0" }`	Production deps
`devDependencies`	`{ "vitest": "^1.0.0" }`	Dev-only deps
`peerDependencies`	`{ "react": "^18.0.0" }`	Expected host deps
`optionalDependencies`	`{ "bufferutil": "^4.0.0" }`	Non-failing deps
`engines`	`{ "node": ">=20" }`	Runtime requirement

Example

JSON

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "private": true,
  "type": "module",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node app.js",
    "test": "vitest"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.18.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "vitest": "^1.0.0"
  }
}

vlt.json

vlt also supports its own configuration file (vlt.json) for workspace configuration, catalogs, and graph modifiers. For more details, see Configuring vlt.