Profiles

A profile is a declarative manifest that describes a complete Minecraft setup.

Profile Location

Profiles are stored in ~/.shard/profiles/<profile-id>/:


~/.shard/profiles/
└── my-survival-world/
    ├── profile.json      # The manifest
    └── overrides/        # Profile-specific files

Profile Manifest

A profile.json looks like this:


{
  "version": "1.21.4",
  "loader": {
    "type": "fabric",
    "version": "0.16.9"
  },
  "mods": [
    {
      "hash": "sha256:a3f2e1d4...",
      "name": "Sodium",
      "enabled": true,
      "source": {
        "platform": "modrinth",
        "project_id": "AANobbMI",
        "version_id": "mc1.21.4-0.6.5"
      }
    }
  ],
  "resourcepacks": [],
  "shaderpacks": []
}

Fields

Field	Description
`version`	Minecraft version (e.g., “1.21.4”)
`loader`	Optional mod loader configuration
`loader.type`	”fabric”, “forge”, “neoforge”, or null for vanilla
`loader.version`	Loader version
`mods`	Array of mod references
`resourcepacks`	Array of resource pack references
`shaderpacks`	Array of shader pack references

Content References

Each mod/pack reference includes:

Field	Description
`hash`	SHA-256 hash of the file (links to content store)
`name`	Display name
`enabled`	Whether to include in instance
`source`	Where this came from (Modrinth, CurseForge, local)

Overrides

The overrides/ directory contains profile-specific files that aren’t in the content store:

Config files you’ve customized
World saves (if stored with profile)
Other files you want per-profile

These are copied into the instance directory at launch.

Profile Operations

Clone

Create a copy of a profile with all its content references:


shard profile clone "Original" "New Profile"

Diff

Compare two profiles to see what’s different:


shard profile diff "Profile A" "Profile B"

Export

Export a profile for sharing (coming soon).

CLI Commands


# List profiles
shard profile list
 
# Create a profile
shard profile create "Name" --version 1.21.4 --loader fabric
 
# Delete a profile
shard profile delete "Name"
 
# Show profile details
shard profile show "Name"