I Published My First npm Package — Here's Everything I Wish I Knew

Publishing to npm is easy. Doing it RIGHT takes some planning. Here's my complete checklist.

Before You Start

Is It Worth Publishing?

Don't publish if:

It's specific to one project

The name is already taken (obviously)

You're not willing to maintain it

Do publish if:

You've copied this code between 3+ projects

Others would benefit from it

You're willing to fix bugs and accept PRs

Step 1: Project Setup

mkdir my-awesome-package && cd my-awesome-package npm init -y

# Install dev dependencies npm install -D typescript @types/node jest ts-jest

# Create source structure mkdir src tests

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// package.json — the important fields { "name" : "@armorbreak/my-awesome-package" , "version" : "1.0.0" , "description" : "A brief description of what your package does" , "main" : "./dist/index.js" , "types" : "./dist/index.d.ts" , "exports" : { "." : { "import" : "./dist/index.mjs" , "require" :…