Straw man proposal: Every lerna command should be a dedicated package in a lerna repo.

• lerna-bootstrap
• lerna-publish
• ...

They should live along side:

• lerna-core: Exposes a programmatic API (Package, Command, Repository, etc).
• lerna-cli: Exposes commands via lerna <command>.

Benefits:

• Lerna can serve as its own demonstration.
• Can share test helpers and other infrastructure between packages.
• Can generate a changelog using lerna-changelog.
• Self hosting is cool. So is eating your own dog food.
• Commands can be pluggable.
  • A dev can publish lerna-frobnicate and let people lerna frobnicate.
  • Awesome commands can be easily pulled into the project with lerna import.

There it is. Tear it apart.