---
id: entrypoints
version: "0.4"
license: unclear
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: dormant
---

# entrypoints — Discover and load entry points from installed packages.

License: permissive · Maintenance: dormant · Popularity: top 1,000 on PyPI

## Install

pip install entrypoints
uv add entrypoints
poetry add entrypoints

## Description

**This package is in maintenance-only mode.** New code should use the
`importlib.metadata module <https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.metadata.html>`_
in the Python standard library to find and load entry points.

Entry points are a way for Python packages to advertise objects with some
common interface. The most common examples are ``console_scripts`` entry points,
which define shell commands by identifying a Python function to run.

*Groups* of entry points, such as ``console_scripts``, point to objects with
similar interfaces. An application might use a group to find its plugins, or
multiple groups if it has different kinds of plugins.

The **entrypoints** module contains functions to find and load entry points.
You can install it from PyPI with ``pip install entrypoints``.

To advertise entry points when distributing a package, see
`entry_points in the Python Packaging User Guide
<https://packaging.python.org/guides/distributing-packages-using-setuptools/#entry-points>`_.

The ``pkg_resources`` module distributed with ``setuptools`` provides a way to
discover entrypoints as well, but it contains other functionality unrelated to
entrypoint discovery, and it does a...

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

Discovers and loads entry points from installed Python packages—a lightweight alternative to pkg_resources for finding plugins and console scripts without scanning all installed packages at import time.

Verdict: entrypoints is a stable, permissively licensed, dependency-free package for entry-point discovery that installs cleanly. However, it is dormant (last release over 4 years ago) and explicitly superseded by importlib.metadata in Python's standard library—suitable only for legacy codebases or environments where standard library alternatives are unavailable.

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/entrypoints) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/entrypoints/)