Registry

The Perstack Registry is a community-driven ecosystem for sharing Experts — like npm, but for AI agents.

Definition-only

Unlike traditional package registries (npm, PyPI) that distribute executables, the Perstack Registry stores only Expert definitions — plain text perstack.toml content.

Traditional Registry	Perstack Registry
Distributes binaries/executables	Distributes text definitions
Code runs directly	Runtime interprets definitions
Hard to audit	Fully transparent

This separation clarifies responsibilities:

Registry: Manages what Experts do (definitions)
Runtime: Controls how Experts execute (in sandbox)

Text-based definitions can still contain malicious instructions. Registry transparency is one layer — combine with sandbox execution, environment variable control, and workspace isolation for defense in depth.

Using Registry Experts

Run Experts directly from the Registry:

npx perstack run @acme/researcher "Analyze market trends"

Or reference them as delegates in perstack.toml:

[experts."my-expert"]
instruction = "Delegate research tasks to the researcher."
delegates = ["@org/researcher"]

The runtime automatically fetches and caches Registry Experts.

The runtime first checks perstack.toml for a matching Expert key. If not found locally, it fetches from the Registry.

Versioning

The Registry uses Semantic Versioning (SemVer):

npx perstack run @acme/researcher@1.2.3 "Analyze market trends"

Write-once immutability

Once published, a version cannot be changed:

Same version number always returns identical content
Dependency resolution is deterministic
No supply chain attacks via version tampering

Without a version specifier, latest is used:

npx perstack run @acme/researcher "Analyze market trends"
# equivalent to @acme/researcher@latest

Scoped Experts

Experts are namespaced by organization:

@{organization}/{expert-name}

Examples:

@acme/researcher — public Expert from Acme org
@mycompany/code-reviewer — private Expert for internal use

Publishing

Publish Experts using the CLI:

npx perstack publish my-expert

For detailed instructions, see Publishing Experts.

Security

The Registry provides several security guarantees:

Measure	What it prevents
Write-once versioning	Version tampering, supply chain attacks
Content integrity	MITM attacks during distribution
Explicit `requiredEnv`	Unintended environment variable exposure

Registry security is one layer of defense. See Sandbox Integration for the full security model.

API Reference

For programmatic access, see API Reference.