Testing a pack

Before voting on a pack or writing a formal review, you should test it. This means installing it in your local OCC Node, querying it on the topic it covers, and evaluating the quality of the responses.

This page walks through the full process — from downloading the pack to casting your vote.

Step 1 — Download the pack

On any pack card in the registry, or on the pack's detail page, click ↓ ZIP. This downloads the pack's GitHub repository as a ZIP archive directly from GitHub. No GitHub account required.

Step 2 — Install the pack in OCC

Once downloaded, unzip the archive. You will get a folder named something like pack-name-main/ — GitHub appends the branch name automatically.

Move this folder into the expert-packs/ directory inside your OCC installation and rename it to something clean:

occ/
└── expert-packs/
    └── julius-caesar/        ← rename to this
        ├── wiki/
        │   ├── overview.md
        │   ├── military-campaigns.md
        │   └── ...
        └── manifest.yaml

The wiki/ folder must be at the root of the pack folder. OCC reads all .md files inside it.

Step 3 — Enable local packs

Open OCC Node in your browser (localhost:7891), go to Settings → Network and enable Use Local Packs Only. This tells the Node to retrieve from your local expert-packs/ folder instead of the broker.

Restart the Node if prompted.

Step 4 — Query the pack

Ask OCC a question on the topic the pack covers. For a pack about Julius Caesar, try:

What were Caesar's key military innovations during the Gallic Wars?

Watch the Sources panel below the answer. You should see specific wiki pages from the pack listed as sources, with the Expert Draft referencing them.

Step 5 — Read the files

Pack files are plain Markdown — fully human-readable. Open any file in wiki/ in a text editor to inspect the content directly. Check:

• Source accuracy — does the text match what the cited sources actually say?
• Coverage — does the pack cover the topic broadly or only partially?
• Structure — are articles well-organised, or are they a raw dump of text?
• Language — is the prose clear, factual, and free of hallucinated claims?

For a reference on what a well-structured pack looks like, see Knowledge packs.

Step 6 — Vote or review

Once you have tested the pack, go back to its page on the OCC site.

Any logged-in user can cast an upvote or downvote. Use this to signal overall quality — did the pack improve your OCC responses on this topic?

Users with the Pack Creator role or above can write a formal review: choose Approve, Request Changes, or Reject, and add a written evaluation. Registry Stewards use formal reviews as the primary input when deciding whether to approve a pack for the registry.

If you do not yet have the Pack Creator role, your vote still counts and is visible to stewards during the review process.