The manifest

manifest.json sits at an app’s root and is the record that makes a folder an app: the engine discovers apps by finding valid manifests in the apps tree. Scaffolding writes it for you; this page is the full schema.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Rules
name	string	yes	The display name shown on the app’s dashboard card.
appId	string	yes	Lowercase letters, digits, hyphens (^[a-z0-9-]+$). Must equal the app’s folder name.
icon	string	no	An emoji for the app’s card. Defaults to 📦 when scaffolded.
description	string	no	One sentence shown under the name on the dashboard.

The appId is the app’s identity everywhere at once: its folder name in apps/, its URL path (/<appId>/), and its data namespace (data/<appId>/). Because the grammar has no underscore, an app id can never collide with Lodekit’s internal _-prefixed namespaces.

Invalid manifests

A folder whose manifest is missing, malformed, or whose appId doesn’t match the folder name is skipped — the engine doesn’t serve it, and it doesn’t appear on the dashboard. Nothing is deleted or modified; fix the manifest (or ask your agent to) and the app appears on the next scan.

Example

apps/greenhouse/manifest.json

{
  "name": "Greenhouse",
  "appId": "greenhouse",
  "icon": "🪴",
  "description": "Your plants, as characters — care schedules, photo timelines, and a journal."
}

The manifest is one part of the app contract — the rest of an app’s required shape is described in App anatomy.