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Overview

Once your app is built and tested locally, you have two paths for distributing it:
  • Deploy a tarball — upload your app directly to a specific Twenty server for internal or private use.
  • Publish to npm — list your app in the Twenty marketplace for any workspace to discover and install.
Both paths start from the same build step.

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Building your app

Run the build command to compile your app and generate a distribution-ready manifest.json: 
yarn twenty build
This compiles TypeScript sources, transpiles logic functions and front components, and writes everything to .twenty/output/. Add --tarball to also produce a .tgz package for manual distribution or the deploy command.

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Deploying to a server (tarball)

For apps you don’t want publicly available — proprietary tools, enterprise-only integrations, or experimental builds — you can deploy a tarball directly to a Twenty server.

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Prerequisites

Before deploying, you need a configured remote pointing to the target server. Remotes store the server URL and authentication credentials locally in ~/.twenty/config.json. Add a remote: 
yarn twenty remote add --api-url https://your-twenty-server.com --as production

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Deploying

Build and upload your app to the server in one step: 
yarn twenty deploy
# To deploy to a specific remote:
# yarn twenty deploy --remote production

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Sharing a deployed app

Sharing private (tarball) apps across workspaces is an Enterprise feature. The Distribution tab will show an upgrade prompt instead of the share controls until your workspace has a valid Enterprise key. See Settings > Admin Panel > Enterprise to activate it.
Tarball apps are not listed in the public marketplace, so other workspaces on the same server won’t discover them by browsing. Once your workspace is on the Enterprise plan, you can share a deployed app like this:
  1. Go to Settings > Applications > Registrations and open your app
  2. In the Distribution tab, click Copy share link
  3. Share this link with users on other workspaces — it takes them directly to the app’s install page
The share link uses the server’s base URL (without any workspace subdomain) so it works for any workspace on the server.

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Version management

When updating an already deployed tarball app, the server requires the version in package.json to be strictly higher (per semver ordering) than the currently deployed version. Re-deploying the same version, or pushing a lower one, is rejected before the tarball is stored — you’ll see a VERSION_ALREADY_EXISTS error from the CLI. To release an update:
  1. Bump the version field in your package.json (e.g. 1.2.3 → 1.2.4, 1.3.0, or 2.0.0)
  2. Run yarn twenty deploy (or yarn twenty deploy --remote production)
  3. Workspaces that have the app installed will see the upgrade available in their settings
Pre-release tags work as expected: bumping 1.0.0-rc.1 → 1.0.0-rc.2 is allowed, and a final release like 1.0.0 is correctly recognized as higher than 1.0.0-rc.5. The version in package.json must itself be a valid semver string.

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Automated CI/CD (scaffolded workflows)

Apps generated with create-twenty-app ship with two GitHub Actions workflows out of the box, under .github/workflows/. They are ready to run as soon as you push the repo to GitHub — no extra setup is needed for CI, and CD only requires a single secret.

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CI — ci.yml

Runs integration tests on every push to main and every pull request. What it does:
  1. Checks out your app’s source.
  2. Spawns an isolated Twenty test instance using the twentyhq/twenty/.github/actions/spawn-twenty-app-dev-test@main composite action (the CI equivalent of yarn twenty server start --test).
  3. Enables Corepack, sets up Node.js from your .nvmrc, and installs dependencies with yarn install --immutable.
  4. Runs yarn test, passing TWENTY_API_URL and TWENTY_API_KEY from the spawned instance so your tests can talk to a real server.
Config knobs:
  • TWENTY_VERSION (env, defaults to latest) — pin the Twenty server version used in CI by editing this in ci.yml.
  • Concurrency is grouped by github.ref and cancels in-progress runs on new pushes.
No secrets are required — the test instance is ephemeral and lives only for the duration of the job.

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CD — cd.yml

Deploys your app to a configured Twenty server on every push to main, and optionally from a pull request when the deploy label is applied. What it does:
  1. Checks out the PR head (for labeled PRs) or the pushed commit.
  2. Runs twentyhq/twenty/.github/actions/deploy-twenty-app@main — the CI equivalent of yarn twenty deploy.
  3. Runs twentyhq/twenty/.github/actions/install-twenty-app@main so the newly deployed version is installed into the target workspace.
Required configuration:
SettingWherePurpose
TWENTY_DEPLOY_URLenv in cd.yml (defaults to http://localhost:3000)The Twenty server to deploy to. Change this to your real server URL before first use.
TWENTY_DEPLOY_API_KEYGitHub repo Settings → Secrets and variables → ActionsAPI key with deploy permission on the target server.
The default TWENTY_DEPLOY_URL of http://localhost:3000 is a placeholder — it will not reach anything from a GitHub-hosted runner. Update it to your server’s public URL (or use a self-hosted runner with network access) before enabling CD.
Triggering a preview deploy from a PR: Add the deploy label to a pull request. The if: guard in cd.yml will run the job for that PR using the PR’s head commit, letting you validate a change on the target server before merging.

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Pinning the reusable actions

Both workflows reference reusable actions at @main, so action updates in the twentyhq/twenty repo are picked up automatically. If you want deterministic builds, replace @main with a commit SHA or release tag on each uses: line.

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Publishing to npm

Publishing to npm makes your app discoverable in the Twenty marketplace. Any Twenty workspace can browse, install, and upgrade marketplace apps directly from the UI.

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Requirements

  • An npm account
  • The twenty-app keyword in your package.json keywords array (add it manually — it is not included by default in the create-twenty-app template)
{
  "name": "twenty-app-postcard-sender",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "keywords": ["twenty-app"]
}

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Marketplace metadata

The defineApplication() config supports optional fields that control how your app appears in the marketplace. Use logoUrl and screenshots to reference images from the public/ folder:
src/application-config.ts
export default defineApplication({
  universalIdentifier: '...',
  displayName: 'My App',
  description: 'A great app',
  defaultRoleUniversalIdentifier: DEFAULT_ROLE_UNIVERSAL_IDENTIFIER,
  logoUrl: 'public/logo.png',
  screenshots: [
    'public/screenshot-1.png',
    'public/screenshot-2.png',
  ],
});
See the defineApplication accordion in the Building Apps page for the full list of marketplace fields (author, category, aboutDescription, websiteUrl, termsUrl, etc.).

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Publish

yarn twenty publish
To publish under a specific dist-tag (e.g., beta or next): 
yarn twenty publish --tag beta

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How marketplace discovery works

The Twenty server syncs its marketplace catalog from the npm registry every hour. You can trigger the sync immediately instead of waiting: 
yarn twenty catalog-sync
# To target a specific remote:
# yarn twenty catalog-sync --remote production
The metadata shown in the marketplace comes from your defineApplication() config — fields like displayName, description, author, category, logoUrl, screenshots, aboutDescription, websiteUrl, and termsUrl.
If your app does not define an aboutDescription in defineApplication(), the marketplace will automatically use your package’s README.md from npm as the about page content. This means you can maintain a single README for both npm and the Twenty marketplace. If you want a different description in the marketplace, explicitly set aboutDescription.

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CI publishing

Use this GitHub Actions workflow to publish automatically on every release (uses OIDC): 
name: Publish
on:
  release:
    types: [published]

permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write

jobs:
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "24"
          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org
      - run: yarn install --immutable
      - run: npx twenty build
      - run: npm publish --provenance --access public
        working-directory: .twenty/output
For other CI systems (GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc.), the same three commands apply: yarn install, yarn twenty build, then npm publish from .twenty/output.
npm provenance is optional but recommended. Publishing with --provenance adds a trust badge to your npm listing, letting users verify the package was built from a specific commit in a public CI pipeline. See the npm provenance docs for setup instructions.

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Installing apps

Once an app is published (npm) or deployed (tarball), workspaces can install it through the UI. Go to the Settings > Applications page in Twenty, where both marketplace and tarball-deployed apps can be browsed and installed. You can also install apps from the command line: 
yarn twenty install
The server enforces semver versioning on install, mirroring the rules on deploy:
  • Installing the same version that is already installed in your workspace is rejected with an APP_ALREADY_INSTALLED error.
  • Installing a lower version than the one currently installed is rejected with a CANNOT_DOWNGRADE_APPLICATION error.
To install a newer version, deploy or publish it first, then re-run yarn twenty install.