Discovery and distribution

The ecosystem has two deliberately separate halves joined by a ref.

patterns.directory                 Git repository
search and evaluation  ── ref ──▶  patterns.yaml + guide files
        ▲                                  │
        └──── anonymous install signal ────┘

Discovery

patterns.directory stores a denormalized, rebuildable index of manifest metadata. It helps humans and the CLI find a pattern by purpose, alias, category, target, language, framework, runtime, or guidance text.

The index is not authoritative. If it disappears, every bundle still exists and remains installable from Git.

Distribution

patterns add resolves the Git ref, validates the bundle, and installs it directly. No pattern archive is uploaded to or served by patterns.directory.

Publishing

Publishing registers a ref. The service verifies that the caller can push to the referenced GitHub repository, resolves its current commit, fetches patterns.yaml at that commit, and derives an index row.

Popularity is a weak signal

Remote installs can send an anonymous, best-effort counter increment. It is useful as a secondary signal, not an exact measure of users, quality, or trust. Relevance and metadata match come first.