Create and organise plugins

A plugin is a named bundle of what your AI coding tools work with: skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and plugin files. A project's plugins are on the Plugins page of the web UI, where you create, clone, rename, describe and delete them.

Field	Rules
Name	Required, up to 200 characters, unique among the plugins of the project.
Slug	Lowercase letters and digits joined by single hyphens, up to 64 characters, unique among the plugins of the project. The slug is the name of the plugin's plugin package and the prefix of its commands.
Description	Optional, up to 25,000 characters.

You need the owner or editor role to create or change a plugin. A viewer opens the same page and reads every plugin.

Open a plugin and its parts

The Plugins page shows each plugin as a card, the blueprint of the plugin you select and an inspector for the part you open.

1. In the project's sidebar, open Plugins.
2. Optional: enter part of a name in Search plugins... to narrow the cards.
3. Select a plugin card. Each card shows the plugin's name and how many skills, agents and MCP servers it has.
4. On the blueprint below the cards, select the part you want to see: the plugin itself at the centre, or its rules, files, a skill, an agent or an MCP server.

The part opens in the inspector, a panel beside the blueprint titled Plugin, Rules, Plugin files, Skill, Agent or MCP server. You read and edit the part there, and close the inspector to return to the blueprint.

The blueprint also carries the state of a plugin's parts. An imported skill shows Update available, Edited locally or Removed upstream, and an MCP server that a skill needs and the plugin lacks appears as Missing with the names of the skills that need it. A plugin published to the plugin library shows a badge such as Published v2, and selecting the badge opens the library entry.

The menu of the plugin at the centre of the blueprint holds the actions on the plugin as a whole: Pull from…, which copies parts of another plugin into this one, Delete plugin, and the library actions Publish to library, Publish new version, Edit library entry and Unpublish, which Publish a plugin describes. A plugin that you added from the library shows Update available when its entry has a newer version, with Update, Skip this version and Show what changed. Browse library at the top of the page opens the plugin library for this project.

Each part has its own page: skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and plugin files.

Create a plugin

Create a plugin when a job needs skills, agents or rules that your existing plugins should not carry, such as a security review next to the specification workflow. You need the owner or editor role.

1. On the Plugins page, select New plugin.
2. In the Create plugin dialog, enter the Plugin name.
3. Optional: change the Slug. The field follows the name as you enter it, and the hint under it reads "The plugin package's name and the prefix of its commands. Left as suggested, it may be adjusted to stay unique."
4. Under Start from, keep Blank plugin.
5. Select Create plugin.

The page selects the plugin and shows its empty blueprint. Add its parts from the blueprint, or pull them from another plugin. To start from a published plugin, follow Browse the plugin library in the dialog.

A plugin you create is not installed anywhere. To work with it in a local project directory, install it with athenode init --plugin <id-or-slug>.

Clone a plugin

Clone a plugin when you want a variant of one you have while the original stays as it is. The prerequisites are those of creating a plugin.

1. On the Plugins page, select New plugin.
2. Enter the Plugin name of the clone.
3. Under Start from, choose the plugin to copy. Your project's copy of the standard plugin is listed first.
4. Select Create plugin.

The clone is a full copy: the skills and agents as copies of their own, the rules, the MCP servers with their values and the plugin files, including the settings files under settings/. Changing the clone does not change the plugin it came from, and the other way round.

A clone counts as one plugin against the plan's limit, and its skills, agents and MCP servers count against the limits per plugin. A clone of your project's copy of the standard plugin is a separate plugin, so the updates that Athenode makes to the copy do not reach it. To take later changes from the original, pull them into the clone.

Rename or describe a plugin

A description tells the other members what a plugin is for, and the start of it is shown on the blueprint.

1. On the Plugins page, select the plugin's card.
2. On the blueprint, select the plugin at the centre. It opens in the inspector under the title Plugin.
3. To rename the plugin, select its name, enter the new one and save it.
4. To describe the plugin, enter the text in the field Add a description… and save it.

The inspector also shows when the plugin was last updated. If another plugin of the project has the name you enter, the web UI answers "Another plugin in this project already has this name." Renaming a plugin leaves its slug as it is.

Change the slug of a plugin

The slug is the name of the plugin's plugin package and the prefix of its commands, so changing it changes what every member types to run the plugin's skills.

1. Open the plugin in the inspector, as in the steps above.
2. In Slug, enter the new slug and save it.
3. In the Change the slug? dialog, read the line that names the old and the new slug, and select Change slug.

Each member runs athenode init in their local project directory to receive the plugin package under its new name. The slug of your project's copy of the standard plugin is atn and cannot be changed.

The web UI answers	Meaning
"Another plugin in this project already has this slug."	Choose a slug that no plugin of the project has.
"Use lowercase letters and digits separated by single hyphens, 64 characters at most."	The slug has another character, a hyphen at an end or two hyphens in a row, or is too long.
"This slug is reserved by an AI tool and cannot be used."	The slug is one that Plugins lists as refused.

Delete a plugin

Delete a plugin once no member works with it and it is not installed in any directory you use. You need the owner or editor role. Your project's copy of the standard plugin cannot be deleted.

1. On the Plugins page, select the plugin's card.
2. On the blueprint, open the menu of the plugin at the centre and select Delete plugin.
3. In the Delete plugin? dialog, select Delete.

The plugin's rules, MCP servers and plugin files go with it. A skill or agent that another plugin of the project also uses stays in that plugin.

A directory in which the deleted plugin was installed keeps its files until init runs there again. That run asks which plugin to install, or installs your project's copy of the standard plugin when that is the only plugin left. Its plan lists the deleted plugin's files under "Removed".

Create and organise plugins from your AI tool

From your AI tool, ask /atn:manage to list, create, clone, rename or delete a plugin. It asks you to confirm a deletion first.

Your AI agent reaches the same actions through the tools plugins_list, plugins_create, plugins_clone, plugins_update and plugins_delete of the Athenode MCP server.