What it does  ·  Install  ·  How it works  ·  Alongside Minify  ·  Docs  ·  Report a problem  ·  Activity

Why not just copy the files yourself? You can, and people do. What the app adds is everything after that: switching a mod off before a match without deleting it, free cosmetics read from the game's own item table, a setup you send as one link, and a game that still works after a Dota patch.

1. Download Dota 2 Mod Manager Setup — direct link, always the latest version
2. Run it. The app installs, creates a shortcut and starts
3. It finds Dota on its own. No launch options, no Steam properties to edit

On Linux the same app ships as an AppImage: chmod +x it and run it.

Nothing is injected into Dota's process, and no file of the game is opened while it runs.

• Dota mounts one folder, named after its voice language. The app sets that language in the game's own settings and installs there — no launch option involved, which is the part worth reading twice. Why that works
• VPK mods go in as pakNN_dir.vpk, slots 10 to 99. Categories that must load first get pak02 to pak09. Slots and load order
• Switching a mod off renames its file to .off. The game skips it, the file stays
• Fonts and cursors go into the game's own folders, with the originals backed up first
• Everything that writes to the game folder is one transaction: if a step fails, the whole change rolls back, displaced files included
• Safe mode, on by default, means the app never touches Dota's own files. Turning it off adds one line to gameinfo_branchspecific.gi and a signature to dota.signatures — both backed up before the first edit, both restored byte for byte when it goes back on. What that buys and costs

Downloads live in %APPDATA%/dota2-mod-manager/downloads, the install manifest beside them. The full picture is in ARCHITECTURE.md, and every module is listed in docs/API.md, which is generated from the source rather than written.

Dota2 Minify is a different kind of tool by a different author: it builds mods by patching the game where this installs finished ones from a catalog. Run both. This app installs into whichever folder the game will really mount — including the one Minify picked — never hands out the pak slots Minify writes, and leaves its files alone. Minify since v1.14rc7 checks ownership before clearing the map folder, so a terrain installed here survives its uninstall.

What Minify is, and how the two share a game.

Two things first: make sure you are on the latest version, and if Dota updated recently, open the app and let it put the patch back.

Drawn from this repository's own git log when the site rebuilds, which it does daily and after every release. No third-party widget, so nobody reading this page is loading a tracker, and nothing has to be committed for the picture to move.

What runs on every push:

Nothing here commits back to main. Workflows that need to remember something between runs keep it in the Actions cache, because a bot commit per run is how a log stops being readable.

npm install
npm start                 # run the app
npm test                  # the whole suite, no framework, no mocks library
npm run test:coverage     # the same with the floor CI enforces
npm run docs              # regenerate docs/API.md from src/
npm run sandbox:seed      # a throwaway game tree with real mods in it
npm run start:sandbox     # the app against it, never your own game

Node 24, Electron 43, no bundler — the renderer is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Every release is produced by release.yml from the commit its tag names.

Open an issue before building anything larger than a fix. It costs one message and saves the case where two people solve the same thing twice, or where the answer was "that is deliberate, and here is why". CONTRIBUTING.md has the rest; AGENTS.md is the same ground for anyone working with a coding assistant.

This project has been written with Claude Code since its first commit on 20 July 2026, and still is. Commits carry a Co-Authored-By trailer saying so.

It says so here because guessing is worse. Everything that would tell you whether the code is any good is already in the open: every commit, more than forty test files, a linter and a coverage floor that CI enforces on two operating systems, and DECISIONS.md, which answers the questions reviewers keep asking with a command you can run yourself.

Send a change written with an assistant and keep the trailer on it. AGENTS.md is what the project asks for in return.

Everything third-party the app ships or fetches, with the licence it comes under. The NOTICE file has the full text and the two additional terms this project adds under section 7 of the GPL.

package.json lists exactly four: adm-zip and electron-updater ship inside the app, electron and electron-builder only build it. The tests and everything under tools/ use no dependencies at all. The VPK reader and writer, the KeyValues parser, the zip guards and the update logic are written here, because every dependency is a stranger with write access to a game folder on tens of thousands of machines.

Valve's own vpk.exe is deliberately not here and must not be added: it is proprietary, and a project that bundles it is not open source in the sense SignPath's terms mean. Reading and writing VPK archives is done by this repository's own code, which is why src/vpk.js exists.

• All mods, previews, guides and catalog data come from the open-source D2PFX repository by h6rd and the Dota 2 modding community. This app is a desktop client for their catalog, and every mod card in it credits its author.
• Community tools (VPKMerge, Background Changer, Compiler, ItemsFix) belong to their authors.
• hanta filmed a walkthrough in Russian, which answers more questions than this page does for anyone who would rather watch than read.

GPL-3.0. Copyright (C) 2026 Mykhailo Lynnyk.

Fork it, change it, ship your own. GPL-3.0 asks you to keep the copyright line, to say that you changed the code and when, and to open your version under the same license. Section 7 lets an author add two more, and this repository does: keep the credit the app shows, and pick your own name for your version. NOTICE puts all of it in plain words.

Catalog content belongs to h6rd and the mod authors, under the license in their repository.