Plugins
Plugins add capabilities the bot did not have before — tools, channels, voice, vaults, and retrieval. Install, update, and remove them from the marketplace.
What a plugin is
A plugin adds a new capability to the bot — a thing it could not do at all before. A plugin can contribute any of the following:
- Tools — new actions the bot can call (search the web, scrape a page, check the weather, read a mailbox).
- Channels — new places the bot can talk to users (Slack, Telegram).
- Voice providers — speech-to-text and text-to-speech backends (Whisper, ElevenLabs).
- Vault providers — read/write integrations for external knowledge stores (Notion, Obsidian).
- Retrieval providers — alternative ways to pull relevant snippets into prompts (LightRAG).
Plugins are different from skills. A skill shapes how the bot uses the capabilities it already has — a code-review skill, a research skill, a GitHub workflow. A plugin grows the set of capabilities themselves. If the bot cannot do something at all, you need a plugin. If it can do it but you want it to behave a specific way, you need a skill.
The bot is useful without any plugins
The default install ships with file system, shell, and memory tools — enough to be useful right away. Install plugins only when you need the capability they provide.
Plugins in the marketplace
The first-party marketplace ships plugins in five shapes. They are grouped below by what they contribute to the bot.
Tools — search
Web search tool plugins. Install whichever backends you have API keys for. Perplexity Sonar is a grounded-answer service, not a raw search index — it returns answers with sources rather than a results list.
brave-search, tavily-search, perplexity-sonar
Tools — browsing and scraping
Page scraping and browser automation. browser drives a real local Chromium via Playwright (full automation + screenshots). browserless is a hosted smart-scrape for rendered HTML, markdown, and links. firecrawl extracts markdown, summaries, HTML, and links from individual pages. pinchtab automates navigation, snapshots, actions, text extraction, and screenshots.
browser, browserless, firecrawl, pinchtab
Tools — utilities
IMAP/SMTP mail with reply threading, and Open-Meteo weather with no credentials required.
mail, weather
Channels
Full channel integrations, not just send/receive adapters. slack ships Socket Mode with thread routing, interactive approvals, and plan approval UI. telegram ships channel, invite onboarding, confirmations, and plan approval.
slack, telegram
Voice providers
whisper is a Whisper-compatible speech-to-text provider for incoming audio. elevenlabs reads replies aloud through ElevenLabs TTS. Needed for Telegram voice.
whisper, elevenlabs
Vault providers
Read and write external knowledge stores. notion is backed by the official Notion HTTP API. obsidian is backed by obsidian-local-rest-api.
notion, obsidian
Retrieval providers
LightRAG-backed retrieval for prompt augmentation and indexing. An alternative to the built-in memory recall when you have a large corpus to index and search.
lightrag
Installing, updating, and removing a plugin
Open Settings → Plugin Marketplace. The page has three filters at the top — All, Installed, and Updates available — plus a card per plugin. First-party plugins carry an Official badge.
Every card has the same lifecycle buttons:
- Install — fetches the plugin artifact and loads it into the runtime. If anything fails partway, nothing changes on the bot.
- Update to x.y.z — shown in place of Install when a newer version is in the registry. Same action, new version number.
- Open settings— shown after install, on plugins that ship a settings schema. Jumps to the plugin's settings page for API keys, credentials, and toggles.
- Uninstall (or Unload & uninstall when the plugin is currently loaded in the runtime) — removes the installed files.
Plugins without any configuration (e.g. weather, which needs no credentials) do not ship a settings page — the Open settings button simply does not appear.
What each card state means
Every marketplace card carries a state badge. Knowing what each one means saves a lot of “why can't I install this” head-scratching.
Available
Not installed yet. Click Install to fetch and load it.
grey badge
Installed
Installed on disk but the runtime has not picked it up yet — usually means the bot needs a restart or the plugin is waiting on another plugin to load.
blue badge
Loaded
Installed and active. The bot is using its tools, channels, or providers right now.
green badge
Update available
A newer version exists in the registry. The Install button becomes Update to x.y.z.
teal badge
Incompatible
The plugin declares an engineVersion range that does not match the current bot runtime. Install is blocked. Usually means you need to update the bot, or the plugin maintainer needs to release a compatible version.
red badge
Artifact missing
The registry lists the plugin, but the actual artifact jar is missing from the marketplace source. Install is blocked. Usually a transient publish issue — try again later.
red badge
When the marketplace itself is unavailable
Some environments have no marketplace access — the page shows “Marketplace is unavailable in this environment” instead of cards. This is normal on restricted or air-gapped deployments. Plugins installed by hand still work; you just can't browse or update from the UI.