# I Just Published My First npm Package — Here's Everything I Did
A complete walkthrough of publishing Cartlify — a React e-commerce UI kit — to npm for the first time. The Milestone Yesterday I published Cartlify to npm. npm install cartlify It sounds simple. But getting to that one line took more decisions, more configuration, and more trial and error than I expected. This article covers everything — from setting up the build config to the actual publish command — so you don't have to figure it out the hard way. What Is Cartlify? Cartlify is a production-ready React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS component library focused on e-commerce UI. 4 components that every e-commerce project needs: ProductCard — 3 layout variants, image gallery, wishlist, sale badges, skeleton loading CartDrawer — animated slide-in, focus trap, ESC dismiss, quantity stepper CheckoutStepper — horizontal/vertical, animated connectors, keyboard navigation PageLoader — 4 animation styles, 3 position modes Plus 3 utility hooks, 11 tree-shakeable icons, 40+ CSS design tokens, full dark mode, and 141 Jest + React Testing Library tests. Built so freelance developers and indie makers can skip the painful e-commerce UI layer and ship faster. Why Publish to npm? Before npm, Cartlify was only available on Gumroad as a paid download. That's fine — but npm adds something Gumroad can't: Developer sees Cartlify → runs npm install cartlify → evaluates the compiled output → trusts the quality → buys the full source on Gumroad npm is a credibility and discovery channel — not just a distribution method. A package on npm signals that something is real, maintained, and production-ready. Also: npmjs.com gets millions of developer searches every month. That's free traffic you can't get from Gumroad alone. The Build Setup — tsup The most important decision before publishing is how you bundle your library. I chose tsup — a zero-config TypeScript bundler built on esbuild. Here's why: Tool Config needed Speed Output Rollup Lots Medium ESM + CJS Webpack Heavy Slow CJS only Vite lib mode