[hn_throwaway_99]

If you are familiar with Nexus or Artifactory or Verdaccio, which all essentially let you have private NPM repos (among other formats like Maven, etc.), that's what this is.

[danShumway]

What's the difference between publishing a binary file on Artifactory and linking to a binary file in a Github release[0]?

Is Artifactory immutable? Or I guess that it handles versioning/publishing better?

[0]: https://help.github.com/en/articles/linking-to-releases

[WatchDog]

Each dependency management tool has their own nuances about how artifacts should be uploaded, and retrieved and what metadata should be stored along side them.

[oblio]

Artifactory can also proxy stuff. It's widely used as a corporate proxy for public repos so that you don't rely on the whims of the internets.