pnpm Documentation Skill

Overview

pnpm is a fast, disk-efficient package manager for JavaScript and Node.js. It uses a content-addressable store to share dependencies across projects, saving disk space and boosting installation speed. pnpm creates a non-flat node_modules directory structure that prevents phantom dependencies, and has built-in support for workspaces (monorepos), catalogs, patching, filtering, and more.

Key Benefits

• Disk efficient — content-addressable store with hard links; shared dependencies across projects
• Fast installations — three-stage installation: resolution, directory structure calculation, linking
• Strict node_modules — non-flat structure prevents access to undeclared dependencies
• Workspace support — built-in monorepo support with pnpm-workspace.yaml, workspace protocol
• Catalogs — reusable dependency version constants across workspace packages
• Filtering — rich --filter selector syntax for targeting packages by name, relation, or changes
• Security — build script approval, trust policies, minimum release age, audit, SBOM generation
• Patching — first-class pnpm patch command for modifying dependencies
• Runtime management — built-in Node.js/Deno/Bun runtime installation via devEngines
• CLI aliases — pn shorthand for pnpm, pnx for pnpm dlx