diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 1bc23a7..ffedf8b 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -18,6 +18,9 @@ dynamic = ["authors", "classifiers", "keywords", "license", "version", "urls"]
 [tool.hatch.metadata.hooks.openzim-metadata]
 kind = "scraper"
 
+[tool.hatch.metadata]
+allow-direct-references = true  # to be removed once we use a released warc2zim version
+
 [project.optional-dependencies]
 scripts = [
   "invoke==2.2.0",