Note

Among Tools that can be useful at the end of this page, typst-package-check is the only official one. Unofficial pre-built binaries for it are available at Typst dev builds. However, the PR robot will run it automatically when you submitting your package, so usually it’s unnecessary to use it locally.

Note

The following is an unofficial copy of the file in Typst’s official repository as of 2026-01-26.

Tips for package authors

Sparse checkout of the repository

Because the repository stores all versions of all packages that ever were published, its size only grows with time. However, most of the time, you will only work in a few specific directories (the ones for your own packages). Git allows for “sparse checkouts”, which reduce the time it takes to clone the repository and its size on your disk.

First, make sure you have forked the repository to your own GitHub account. Then, follow these steps to clone the repository:

git clone --depth 1 --no-checkout --filter="tree:0" git@github.com:{your-username}/packages
cd packages
git sparse-checkout init
git sparse-checkout set packages/preview/{your-package-name}
git remote add upstream git@github.com:typst/packages
git config remote.upstream.partialclonefilter tree:0
git checkout main

The packages directory you are in still corresponds to the whole repository. Do not delete or edit the README.md, LICENSE or any other file at the root. Instead, create the directory packages/preview/{your-package-name}/{version} and copy your files here. Note that packages/ is a directory in the packages repository: if you look at the full path, there should be two consecutive parts called packages.

Don’t use submodules

The Typst package repository requires the files to be actually copied to their respective directory, they should not be included as Git submodules.

When copying a package from another Git repository, you should not copy the .git folder, otherwise when creating a commit to publish your package, Git will replace the copied files with a submodule.

What to commit? What to exclude?

In some case, simply copying and pasting the contents of the repository in which you developed your package to a new directory in this repository is enough to publish a package. However, this naive approach may result in unnecessary files being included, making the size of this repository and of the final archives larger than they need to be.

There are two solutions to limit this problem: excluding files from the archive (using the exclude key in your package manifest), or simply not committing the files to this repository in the first place.

To know which strategy to apply to each file, we can split them in three groups:

1. Required files
Files that are necessary for the package to work. If any of these files are removed, the package would break for the end user. This includes the manifest file, main Typst file and its dependencies, and in case of a template package, any file in the template directory.

2. Documentation files
Files that are necessary for the package to be displayed correctly on Typst Universe. This includes the README, and any files that are linked from there (manuals, examples, illustrations, etc.). These files can easily be accessed by opening the package README.

3. Other files
This generally includes test files, build scripts, but also examples or manuals that are not linked in the README. These files would be almost impossible to access for the final user, unless they browse this GitHub repository or their local package cache.

The first two groups (required and documentation files) should be committed to this repository. And files that are not strictly necessary for the package to work (documentation files) should be excluded in typst.toml. They will still be available on typst universe to link to from the README.
The third group should simply not be committed to this repository. If you think some of the remaining files are important, they probably belong to the second group and should be linked in the README, so that they are easily discoverable. A good example showing how to link examples and a manual is CeTZ.

The only exceptions to this rule are the LICENSE file (that should always be available along with the source code, so it should not be excluded), and the README (which is generally a lightweight file, and can provide minimal documentation in case the user is offline or can’t access anything else than their local package cache for some other reason).

Also note that there is no need to exclude template thumbnails: they are automatically left out of the archive.

Tools that can be useful

The community created some tools that can help when developing your package:

• typst-package-check, to lint your package.
• tytanic, to test your packages.
• typship, to easily install your package locally or submit it to Typst Universe.

A more comprehensive list can be found in Package development — Best of Typst (TCDM) maintained by the community.