diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d734fd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+# stuff we need to include into the sdist is handled automatically by
+# setuptools_scm - it includes all git-committed files.
+# but we want to exclude some committed files/dirs not needed in the sdist:
+prune .github
+prune scripts
+prune docs
+prune tests
+prune lambdalib/padring/
+prune lambdalib/*lib/
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 467b935..b7fdc95 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ requires = [
 build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
 
 [tool.setuptools]
-include-package-data = false
+include-package-data = true
 packages = [
     "lambdalib"
 ]