Project Setup¶

This guide builds a complete plugin step by step. The plugin we will write is an Agent Report Plugin: a background component that queries the framework every N seconds for the current list of registered agents and logs a formatted summary. By the time we reach Complete Plugin Example, it will demonstrate every major plugin concept.

Scaffold it instead

Rather than creating these files by hand, you can generate a ready-to-edit plugin (directory, manifest.json, and a commented plugin.py) with the Create action of the component manager (manage_components.py). This guide is still worth reading to understand what the generated files do.

Setting up the project files¶

Create a directory for the plugin under consortium/components/plugins/:

consortium/components/plugins/agent_report/
├── manifest.json
├── plugin.py
└── config.json

manifest.json points the component loader at the plugin class. The entry point format is <module>:<class>. The class must be named Plugin by convention:

{
  "entry_point": "plugin:Plugin",
  "enabled": true
}

config.json will hold the reporting interval (the plugin will load this at startup):

{
  "interval_seconds": 30
}

Continue to Plugin Metadata to declare the plugin class itself.