craftA fast, strict package manager for Node.js

Written in Rust. Installs from npm into an isolated node_modules, keeps a deterministic lockfile, and runs install scripts only for packages you trust.

Get started

Why craft?

CLI reference

⚡

Fast

Parallel resolution and downloads, registry metadata cached on disk and revalidated with ETags, and packages cloned from a global store. An unchanged project installs in milliseconds.

See the benchmarks

🔒

Deterministic

craft.lock records every resolved version, tarball and integrity hash. Frozen installs, the default in CI, install exactly that.

📦

Strict and isolated

Every package sees only the dependencies it declares, each project gets its own node_modules/.craft, and the global store is never modified after extraction.

🛡️

Safe by default

Tarballs are checked against their integrity hash, and dependencies' install scripts run only for packages listed in trustedDependencies.

🧩

npm-compatible

Semver ranges, dist-tags, npm aliases, git and tarball URLs, file and link dependencies, peer and optional dependencies, platform packages, and .npmrc registries and auth.

🖥️

Everywhere

Native binaries for Linux (glibc and musl, x64 and arm64), macOS and Windows, with no runtime dependencies.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/craftpkg/craft/main/install.sh | bash

Then, in a project:

craft install          # install everything in package.json
craft add react        # add a dependency
craft run build        # run a script

See Installation for release binaries, Windows and building from source.

Benchmarks

craft against npm, pnpm and Yarn on the largest project in the benchmark:

A Next.js app with a design system, cloud SDKs, Storybook, Jest, Playwright and a webpack toolchain, 1,391 packages · mean wall time, lower is better

Warm cache and lockfile

craft1.72 s best

npm7.26 s 4.2×

pnpm1.80 s 1.05×

yarn7.67 s 4.5×

Warm cache, no lockfile

craft1.78 s best

npm12.38 s 6.9×

pnpm1.91 s 1.07×

yarn9.58 s 5.4×

Cold: no cache, no lockfile

craft18.38 s best

npm62.98 s 3.4×

pnpm28.82 s 1.6×

yarn29.97 s 1.6×

Already installed

craft5.9 ms best

npm673 ms 114×

pnpm35 ms 6.0×

yarn900 ms 152×

Every project, scenario and peak memory, and how it's kept fair: Benchmarks.