Author and publish APM packages

You’re here because you want to author an APM package others can install. This is the producer ramp.

The producer ladder

Five steps, in order. Each links to the page that owns it:

#	Step	What success looks like
1	Author primitives	Skills, prompts, instructions, agents, hooks, commands, MCP under `.apm/`
2	Compile your package	`apm compile` writes deterministic per-target output you can git-diff
3	Preview and validate	`apm preview` and `apm view` confirm what consumers will receive
4	Pack a bundle	`apm pack` produces a `.tar.gz` you can ship offline or to a marketplace
5	Publish to a marketplace	Others install your package with `apm install <owner>/<repo>`

You don’t need a marketplace to start. Step 4 is enough for internal teams; the marketplace step is for public discovery.

Where to start

Your situation	Start here
First time — want a working package end-to-end	Your first package
You have primitives in `.apm/` and need to test them locally	Compile your package
You’re about to ship — want to verify what consumers will see	Preview and validate
You need to ship a single file to a customer / air-gapped env	Pack a bundle
You want a public marketplace listing	Publish to a marketplace
Your package links into other packages and you hit broken refs	Package-relative links

The producer mental model

A producer package is just a directory with:

my-package/
  apm.yml                    # manifest -- who you are, what you depend on
  .apm/
    skills/                  # primitives consumers can install
    prompts/
    instructions/
    agents/
    hooks/
  README.md                  # rendered on the marketplace listing

apm compile deterministically transforms .apm/ into per-target output. apm pack zips the result. apm publish (via a marketplace adapter) lists it. There is no separate “build pipeline” — the CLI is the build pipeline.

Compatible with the consumer ramp

Every package you publish here installs through the consumer ramp’s apm install command. Test that loop yourself: install your own package in a scratch repo before declaring it shipped. The preview page walks you through the dry-run.