Developer Guide

This guide covers everything you need to build, publish, and maintain plugins and agents for the CortexPrism ecosystem. Whether you are extending the system with custom capabilities or building agents for specific use cases, you are in the right place.

Sections

Guide	Description
Getting Started	Plugin CLI commands, Web UI, and configuration
Plugin Types	Overview of ESM, MCP, and WASM plugin architectures
ESM Plugins	Building JavaScript/TypeScript ESM plugins
MCP Plugins	Building Model Context Protocol server plugins
WASM Plugins	Building WebAssembly plugins
Plugin API Reference	Complete plugin capability and lifecycle API
Agent Development	Creating and customizing agent configurations
Publishing	Publishing plugins and agents to the marketplace
Submission Standards	Repository structure, versioning, AI disclosure, and submission procedure
Best Practices	Guidelines and recommendations for plugin development

Quick Start

The fastest way to start developing a plugin:

# Create a new ESM plugin
mkdir my-plugin
cd my-plugin
npm init -y
npm install @cortexprism/plugin-sdk

import { definePlugin } from "@cortexprism/plugin-sdk";

export default definePlugin({
  name: "my-plugin",
  version: "1.0.0",
  capabilities: {
    async greet(name: string): Promise<string> {
      return `Hello, ${name}!`;
    },
  },
});

Install your plugin locally to test:

cortex plugin install ./my-plugin

System Requirements

• Runtime: Deno v2.0+ or Node.js v20+ (for ESM plugins)
• CortexPrism: v0.1.0+
• Rust toolchain (only for WASM plugins)
• Docker (optional, for MCP plugin testing)

Key Concepts

• Plugin: A self-contained module that adds capabilities to the agent tool system
• Capability: A single function exposed by a plugin that the agent can invoke
• Manifest: Metadata describing the plugin (name, version, capabilities, permissions)
• Sandbox: Isolated execution environment for plugins with resource limits
• Marketplace: Central registry for discovering and distributing plugins

Architecture Overview

Agent Loop
  → Tool Registry
    → Plugin Manager
      → Plugin Sandbox (isolated)
        → ESM Runtime / MCP Process / WASM Runtime

Each plugin type runs in its own sandboxed environment with resource limits enforced by the Parallax security layer.