ChengYoung

Plugins

Extend the agent with bundled skills, MCP servers and lifecycle hooks — installation requires explicit consent, hooks run commands on your machine, review before enabling.

What a plugin is

A plugin is a packaged extension unit: one plugin can bring skills, MCP servers and lifecycle hooks at once. Where "extensions (MCP)" refers specifically to tool integration, a plugin is a fuller bundle — the author publishes a set of capabilities together with their configuration, and one install makes them all available.

Where to manage them

Open Settings → Plugins:

  • Install: install plugins from a git URL (the author's repository or your own fork);
  • Scope: plugins are either global (available in all projects) or project (current project only);
  • Enable / disable: each plugin has its own switch — disabling stops its skills and hooks while keeping the configuration;
  • Auto-update: per-plugin toggle, off by default for safety — updates bring in new code; review the changes manually before updating.

Hooks: the part to scrutinize

Lifecycle hooks run commands on your machine when specific events occur (e.g. before a session starts, around commits). This is the most powerful part of a plugin — and where risk concentrates:

  • Before enabling a plugin, review the hook scripts in its source repository — what commands they run, which files they touch, which network addresses they call;
  • Only install plugins from sources you trust; do not enable plugins whose provenance you cannot verify.

Permissions and uninstall

  • MCP tools brought in by plugins are governed by the same Allow / Ask / Deny modes as extensions (see Permissions & safety);
  • Uninstalling a plugin removes its skills, servers and hooks — no listeners or leftover processes remain.

Next steps

  • How to use — and write — the skills inside plugins: see Skills.
  • MCP servers bundled in plugins work like standalone extensions: see Extensions (MCP).

This page is adapted from upstream open-source documentation (Apache-2.0) with modifications; see /legal/provenance for sources and changes.