Sources

The use command resolves templates from several source types. The source format determines how the CLI locates and fetches the template file.

Local file

A path to a template on disk, either relative or absolute:

npx croct@latest use template.json5

This is the simplest option for testing templates during development.

URL

A publicly accessible URL pointing to the template file:

npx croct@latest use https://example.com/template.json5

If the URL does not end with a filename, the CLI looks for template.json or template.json5 at that location automatically.

GitHub

A blob URL pointing to a template in a GitHub repository:

npx croct@latest use https://github.com/org/repo/blob/master/template.json5

The CLI extracts the repository, branch, and file path from the URL and fetches the template directly from GitHub.

npm

The npm:// scheme resolves a template from an npm package's linked repository. The CLI reads the package metadata from the npm registry, finds the associated GitHub repository, and fetches the template from its root directory:

npx croct@latest use npm://package-name

This is useful for libraries that ship a companion template alongside their package. For details on setting this up, see the publishing templates tutorial.

Registry

Registries map custom URL schemes to template locations. The built-in registry maps schemes like croct://, shadcn-ui://, magic-ui://, and others to their corresponding template repositories:

npx croct@latest use croct://starter/nextjs

For details on the registry format, built-in schemes, and custom registries, see Registries.

You can specify a custom registry using the --registry global option.