Plugin sources

A plugin source is a directory or repository containing plugins and standalone skills that Symposium discovers automatically. Plugin sources can be local directories or remote Git repositories, and Symposium searches them recursively to find all available extensions.

Discovery rules

Symposium scans a plugin source recursively to find plugins and standalone skills:

• A plugin is a directory that contains a SYMPOSIUM.toml file;
• A standalone skill is a directory that contains a SKILL.md and does not contain a SYMPOSIUM.toml file. Standalone skills must have crates metadata in their frontmatter.

We do not allow plugins or standalone skills to be nested within one another. When we find a directory that is either a plugin or a skill, we do not search its contents any further.

Example structure

plugin-source/
  my-plugin/
    SYMPOSIUM.toml        # ✓ Plugin
    skills/               # ✗ Not searched (parent claimed)
      basic/
        SKILL.md
  serde-skill/
    SKILL.md              # ✓ Standalone skill
  nested/
    deep/
      tokio-skill/
        SKILL.md          # ✓ Standalone skill (found recursively)
  mixed/
    SYMPOSIUM.toml        # ✓ Treated as plugin
    SKILL.md              # ✗ Ignored (plugin takes precedence)

Configuration

Plugin sources are configured in your config.toml file. See the Configuration reference for details on setting up local directories, Git repositories, and built-in sources.

Validation

You can validate a plugin source directory:

# Validate all plugins and skills in a directory
cargo agents plugin validate path/to/plugin-source/

# Also verify that crate names exist on crates.io (on by default; use --no-check-crates to skip)
cargo agents plugin validate path/to/plugin-source/ --no-check-crates

This scans the directory, attempts to load all plugins and skills, and reports any errors found.