Plugin Creator

Use this skill when a user wants a local Codewhale plugin bundle. Codewhale v0.9.1 has a deliberately bounded loader: trusted and enabled bundles may add declarative Skills and MCP servers through the existing engines. Other component kinds are inventory-only.

Workflow

1. Pick a Codewhale-owned location:
   • User bundle: ~/.codewhale/plugins/<plugin-name>/
   • Workspace bundle: <workspace>/.codewhale/plugins/<plugin-name>/
2. Normalize the bundle name to lowercase hyphen-case.
3. Create plugin.toml:

schema_version = 1

[plugin]
name = "my-plugin"
version = "0.1.0"
description = "What this bundle provides"

[skills]
path = "skills"

4. Put each Skill under skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md. Codewhale exposes it as my-plugin:<skill-name>, never as an unqualified command.
5. Add [mcp_servers.<name>] only when the bundle needs an existing MCP engine. Keep stdio commands and paths inside the bundle. Map local environment values only as exact ${SOURCE_ENV} references. For remote MCP, use HTTPS (or loopback HTTP), forbid URL user information/query/fragment, use only environment-backed headers or bearer tokens, and declare the exact normalized endpoint host set in [capabilities].network_hosts. Never place credentials in the manifest.
6. Declare commands, agents, hooks, LSP, native extensions, filesystem roots, or lifecycle mutation only when inventorying future work. Codewhale shows them as inactive and still activates reviewed Skills and MCP from the same bundle. A bundle that only declares those unsupported surfaces cannot be enabled.
7. Validate and review without executing bundle content:
   • /plugin validate <plugin-name>
   • /plugin show <plugin-name>
   • /plugin enable <plugin-name> to open the content/capability review
   • run the exact /plugin trust ... confirmation shown, then enable again
8. Verify /skills inspect reports plugin provenance and /plugin list reports the expected trust and activation state. Trust stages the reviewed content but does not activate it; enablement rebuilds the current workspace's Skill/MCP catalogue immediately.

Every user and workspace bundle starts untrusted and disabled. Do not add a marketplace, downloader, updater, compatibility scan, executable extension runtime, or automatic trust flow; those surfaces are outside v0.9.1.