Package name dispute: request to publish mimify (currently blocked as "too similar to existing package minify")

[kirilenko]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

Body

I'd like to request review of a package-name similarity block on the npm registry.

Attempting to publish mimify@0.0.1 returns:

403 Forbidden - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/mimify - Package name too similar to
existing package minify; try renaming your package to '@k8stack/mimify' and publishing
with 'npm publish --access=public' instead

mimify is a distinct, long-established term (originally a Unix/Perl MIME-encoding utility), not an attempt to typosquat or impersonate minify. My package is an unrelated JavaScript library for animated widgets.

I previously emailed support@npmjs.com about this (no response), then sent a follow-up that bounced due to an unrelated DNS/authentication issue on my sending domain — hence raising it here instead.

Could someone from the npm team review and allow registration of the unscoped name mimify? Happy to provide any additional context.

npm username: k8stack

[stefisha]

This is expected behavior from npm’s package name similarity checks. They block names that are considered too close to existing packages to help prevent typosquatting.

Since mimify is being detected as too similar to minify, I don’t think there is a way to bypass this from the npm CLI.

Your best option would be to contact npm support and ask them to manually review the name. If they decide the packages are clearly unrelated, they may be able to allow it.

Otherwise, you would need to use a scoped package such as @k8stack/mimify, as the error message suggests.