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Open Design Plugin & Marketplace Spec (v1)

In one sentence: Open Design plugins turn portable SKILL.md capabilities into marketplace-ready, one-click design workflows while preserving compatibility with existing agent skill catalogs, headless CLI use, and self-hosted deployment.

Parent: spec.md · Siblings: skills-protocol.md · architecture.md · agent-adapters.md · modes.md

A Plugin is the unit of distribution for Open Design. Where a Skill describes a single capability that an agent can run, a Plugin is the shippable bundle around it: one or more skills, an optional design system reference, optional craft rules, optional Claude-plugin assets, a preview, a use-case query, an asset folder, and a small machine-readable sidecar that powers OD's marketplace surface. A plugin is always anchored to a portable SKILL.md so it is publishable to every existing skill catalog without modification.

Compatibility promise (extends skills-protocol.md): Any plugin folder that ships a SKILL.md works as a plain agent skill in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, Hermes, etc. Adding open-design.json is purely additive — it unlocks OD's marketplace card, preview, one-click "use" flow, and typed context-chip strip, but it never changes how the underlying skill runs. One repo, two consumption modes.

Executive map for readers

This is an agent-era plugin system, not a Figma-era UI extension system. A plugin does not directly mount inside the canvas, own a local panel lifecycle, or talk to the app through bespoke postMessage / RPC channels. Instead, the plugin is a packaged intent and context layer that the user, UI, CLI, or another agent can select; OD resolves it into a query, context chips, assets, design-system references, MCP/tool capabilities, and run metadata; then the selected code agent consumes that package through the same project/run pipeline as any other OD task.

The shortest mental model:

  1. Plugin author ships portable capability. SKILL.md remains the executable agent contract; open-design.json adds OD marketplace metadata, input fields, defaults, previews, and context wiring.
  2. User or agent picks a workflow. The selection can happen from the marketplace, inline in the home input, inside an existing project chat, from CLI, or from CI.
  3. OD applies the plugin without making the plugin a UI process. Apply returns a hydrated brief, typed context chips, assets, and capability requirements. It does not start a hidden plugin runtime.
  4. Agent drives generation. The daemon creates or updates a project, starts a run, streams events over SSE / CLI ND-JSON, and records artifacts.
  5. UI is a collaboration surface. The web/desktop UI can show forms, previews, direction pickers, critique panels, and live artifacts, but the same flow must work headlessly through od.

Figma-era vs agent-era boundary

Question Figma-era plugin assumption Open Design v1 answer
Who consumes the plugin? The host UI runtime. A code agent through OD's project/run pipeline.
Does the plugin need a live UI lifecycle? Usually yes: mount panel, listen to messages, mutate document. No. The plugin is static files plus manifest; the agent run is the active process.
Is there a plugin-to-app RPC protocol? Often yes. Not as the primary contract. OD uses HTTP internally, CLI for agents, MCP where useful, and SSE/ND-JSON for run events.
What does "Use plugin" do? Opens or runs a UI extension. Hydrates a query, context chips, assets, inputs, and capability gates, then starts or continues an agent run.
What is persisted? Host document mutations. OD project metadata, artifacts, conversation/run history, and plugin provenance.

Core interaction sequence

sequenceDiagram
  participant U as User or Agent
  participant S as OD Surface<br/>(Web, Desktop, CLI, CI)
  participant D as OD Daemon
  participant P as Plugin Manifest<br/>(SKILL.md + open-design.json)
  participant A as Code Agent
  participant R as Project Runtime<br/>(files + artifacts)

  U->>S: choose plugin + provide inputs
  S->>D: apply plugin(pluginId, inputs, optional projectId)
  D->>P: resolve skill, query template, context, assets, capabilities
  P-->>D: ApplyResult(query, contextItems, assets, requiredCapabilities)
  D-->>S: hydrated brief + chips + trust/capability prompts
  U->>S: send / confirm run
  S->>D: create project or run(pluginId, query, contextItems)
  D->>A: launch agent with skill + project context
  A->>R: read/write files, generate artifacts
  R-->>D: artifact and file updates
  D-->>S: SSE or ND-JSON run events
  S-->>U: live preview, questions, critique, final artifacts
Loading

Mode-specific query examples

Mode Entry Example query What the plugin contributes
Marketplace detail User clicks Use on a plugin page Make a 12-slide investor deck for a Series A SaaS startup targeting enterprise design teams. Deck skill, slide craft rules, example assets, required inputs, preview samples.
Home inline input User types a brief, then picks a suggested plugin Create a landing page for a new AI browser extension, use a dark neon visual direction. Landing-page skill, suggested design system, prompt rewrite, starter assets.
Project chat follow-up User is already inside a generated project Turn this landing page into a launch announcement deck. Existing project context, selected artifact refs, deck conversion skill, preserved brand tokens.
Headless CLI / code agent Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, CI, or script shells out to od od run create --plugin make-a-deck --input audience=investors --input topic='AI design ops' Same manifest resolution, same context chips, same run events without opening desktop.
Self-hosted marketplace Team runs a private catalog Create an internal QBR deck using the Acme design system and sales metrics CSV. Private plugin index, trusted internal design system, asset attachments, restricted data policy.

The important product shift: plugins are not local UI addons; they are reusable agent workflows. UI components can collaborate with those workflows, but consumption and processing belong to the agent run.

One-click long-task delivery, atomic pipelines, and devloop

OD's core unit is not "one prompt, one output" — it is a long-running design agent task: a single run typically spans discovery → direction picking → generation → critique → secondary refinement, sometimes lasting tens of minutes to hours. A plugin's job is to slice that long-running task into a shippable unit that a user, UI, CLI, or another agent can launch with one click.

Concretely, this spec promotes the existing "first-party atoms" from a flat capability list into an atomic pipeline that plugins assemble:

  • Atom (§10): a named capability exposed by the OD daemon and first-party tools (discovery-question-form, direction-picker, todo-write, file-read/write, research-search, media-image, live-artifact, critique-theater, etc.).
  • Pipeline (§5 / §10.1): the plugin uses od.pipeline to compose atoms into ordered stages. The spec ships a default reference pipeline of discovery → plan → generate → critique; plugins can add, reorder, or loop over any stage.
  • Devloop (§10.2): when a stage is marked repeat: true with an until termination condition (critique score, user confirmation, preview load success, etc.), the agent automatically iterates on the previous artifact until the condition holds or the user explicitly cancels.
  • Generative UI (§10.3): when a stage needs human-in-the-loop input (information, authorization, direction picking, optimization confirmation), the agent triggers a surface that the plugin declares ahead of time in its manifest's od.genui.surfaces[]. The daemon broadcasts the request through OD's native event stream, which can also be projected into AG-UI canonical events for external clients. Once the user answers, the daemon writes the answer back to the project; the surface's persist field decides whether the answer is remembered at run / conversation / project tier so that multi-turn chats do not pester the user with the same question twice.

In one sentence: a plugin describes "what this long-running task's pipeline looks like and which GenUI surfaces it needs to collaborate with the user", the daemon supplies atoms and the surface bus, the agent runs a devloop on the pipeline, and artifacts carry provenance (§11.5) recording every plugin that touched the task.

Current implementation clarification: discovery -> plan -> generate -> critique is a reference pipeline shape, not a fixed hard-coded wizard. A plugin snapshot can carry od.pipeline.stages[].atoms[]; the daemon resolves that snapshot, injects the active plugin block plus active stage atom blocks into the system prompt, emits stage events, and lets the agent work through the pipeline. When the user has not explicitly selected a plugin, OD still does not launch a generic naked agent: the base Open Design designer prompt and discovery rules are always present. Product entry points bind sensible defaults on top of that base: Home free-form input routes through the bundled, hidden od-default scenario, while typed New Project flows choose the default bundled scenario for the project kind. od-default is a router and task-shaper; it should guide the run into the normal design pipeline, not be treated as a standalone "make it beautiful" aesthetic engine.

Four product scenarios

Scenario (od.taskKind) User entry point Plugin contribution Typical atom sequence
new-generation A one-line brief or a marketplace pick Workflow + design-system suggestion + craft + starter assets discovery → direction-picker → generate → critique
code-migration An existing repo / local path Source-code ingest atom + design-token extraction + rewrite plan + diff preview code-import → design-extract → rewrite-plan → generate → diff-review
figma-migration Figma file URL / screenshots figma-extract atom + token mapping + high-fidelity web implementation strategy figma-extract → token-map → generate → critique
tune-collab An existing OD project + artifact Critique-tune, brand swap, A/B variants, stakeholder review on top of an existing artifact direction-picker → patch-edit → critique → handoff

All four scenarios share the same ApplyResult, the same run pipeline, and the same artifact provenance contract (§11.5); only the inputs shape, the initial assets, and the pipeline starting point differ.


Table of contents

  1. Status
  2. Vision
  3. Goals and non-goals
  4. Compatibility matrix
  5. Plugin folder shape
  6. open-design.json schema
  7. open-design-marketplace.json schema
  8. Discovery and install
  9. The Apply pipeline
  10. Trust and capabilities
  11. First-party atoms
  12. Architecture — what changes in the existing repo
  13. CLI surface
  14. Public web surface
  15. Publishing and catalog distribution
  16. Deployment and portability — Docker, any cloud
  17. Phased implementation plan
  18. Examples
  19. Risks and open questions
  20. Why this is a meaningful step for Open Design
  21. Post-v1 extensibility — artifact taxonomy, evaluators, and production handoff
  22. Scenario coverage matrix and delivery roadmap
  23. Authoring extension points: building uncovered scenarios on top of v1 substrate
  24. Self-bootstrapping: OD's hard flow as first-party plugins

0. Status

  • Authoring stage: draft, awaiting review.
  • Defaults locked from the planning round (overridable in review):
    • Compatibility = wrap-then-extend. Existing SKILL.md and .claude-plugin/plugin.json repos run as-is; open-design.json is an additive sidecar.
    • Trust = tiered and provenance-aware. Bundled plugins and official-marketplace plugins are trusted by default; user-added third-party marketplaces, arbitrary GitHub / URL / local plugins start restricted unless the marketplace or plugin is explicitly trusted.

1. Vision

Open Design becomes a server + CLI + atomic core engine + plugin/marketplace system. The product surface inverts: instead of "click a button, fill a form", users open a marketplace, click a plugin, and the input box hydrates with a query plus a typed strip of context chips above it. The same plugin folder is also a valid agent skill for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, Hermes, and is publishable as a standalone GitHub repo to:

Each catalog needs a different listing format, but all of them index SKILL.md-shaped folders. By keeping SKILL.md canonical and open-design.json strictly sidecar, a single repo lands in every catalog without per-target rewrites.

A second axis of the same vision: the CLI is the canonical agent-facing API for Open Design. Code agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes, in-house orchestrators) drive OD by shelling out od …, not by hitting /api/* directly. The CLI wraps every server capability — project creation, conversation/run lifecycle, plugin apply, file system operations on a project, design library introspection, daemon control — behind a stable subcommand contract. The HTTP server is an implementation detail that backs the desktop UI and the CLI itself; agents that talk HTTP are bypassing the contract.

A third axis, derived from the second: OD runs fully headless; the UI is a productivity layer, not a runtime dependency. A user with nothing but Claude Code (or Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI) and od installed can browse the marketplace, install a plugin, create a project, run a task, and consume the produced artifacts end-to-end without ever launching the desktop app. The desktop UI is exactly the same value-add Cursor's IDE adds on top of cursor-agent CLI: faster discovery, live artifact preview, chat/canvas side-by-side, marketplace browsing, direction-picker GUI, critique-theater panel — all sugar on the same primitives. Every UI feature is implementable as a CLI subcommand or a streaming event first; the UI consumes those primitives and adds presentation. The decoupling is enforced architecturally (§11.7).

A fourth axis, the foundation for ecosystem reach and commercial viability: OD is one Docker image, deployable to any cloud. Because the headless mode of (3) has no electron and no GUI dependencies, a single multi-arch container image (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64) brings up the full daemon + CLI + web UI on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, or any self-hosted Kubernetes / docker-compose / k3s setup, with no per-cloud rewrite. Self-hosted enterprises can run a private marketplace; partners can embed OD inside their stack; CI pipelines can spin up ephemeral OD containers for "generate slides for the daily report"-shaped tasks. The technical contract is in §15.

A fifth axis is the product-shape co-evolution with the agent: UI is requested by the agent but rendered by controlled product components (Generative UI), not by arbitrary agent-authored frontend code. While running a long-horizon design pipeline, the agent will need to ask the user for information (figma OAuth, target-audience confirmation, etc.), seek authorization (approving an expensive media generation run), pick a direction (one of three critique alternatives), or fill missing content (a missing brand asset). These UIs are not pre-shipped marketplace chip strips; they are declared by the plugin in its manifest, triggered by the agent during the run, and published by the daemon through OD-native events that the web / desktop / CLI can render and external clients can consume through the AG-UI adapter (see §10.3). OD v1 ships four built-in surface kinds (form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt) as the minimum set; custom plugin-bundled React components stay behind the genui:custom-component capability gate and sandbox. Tied to this axis, the project record persists a layer of GenUI surface state: an authorization or confirmation the user once gave is reused across multi-turn conversations and runs in the same project, instead of re-asking. This is the natural landing point of "plugin = long-horizon task wrapper" plus "project = long-lived work artifact".

2. Goals and non-goals

Goals

  1. Every runnable, distributable OD plugin is a valid agent skill (SKILL.md- or .claude-plugin/plugin.json-anchored). No fork of the skill spec.
  2. A vanilla skill or claude-plugin repo becomes an OD plugin by adding an optional open-design.json sidecar — no rename, no body changes.
  3. Three install sources: local folder, GitHub repo (with optional ref/subpath), arbitrary HTTPS archive, plus federated open-design-marketplace.json indexes.
  4. One-click "use" auto-fills the brief input and a strip of ContextItem chips above it (skills, design-system, craft, assets, MCP, claude-plugin, atom).
  5. Tiered trust by default; capability scoping is declarative and optional.
  6. The OD core engine, atomic capabilities, and plugin runtime are all reachable from CLI so any code agent can drive Open Design headlessly.
  7. A plugin is a long-task wrapper. Each plugin targets exactly one of the four product scenarios (new-generation / code-migration / figma-migration / tune-collab) and uses od.pipeline to assemble OD's first-party atoms into ordered stages plus an optional devloop (§10).
  8. Reproducible + auditable. Every apply persists an immutable AppliedPluginSnapshot (§8.2.1); runs and artifacts back-reference the snapshot id. A plugin upgrade never breaks an old run's prompt reconstruction.
  9. Same artifact, many surfaces. The artifact manifest (§11.5.1) records plugin provenance plus the export and deploy history across downstream surfaces (cli / other code agents / cloud / desktop) so subsequent tuning, migration, and collaboration always pick up the same artifact.
  10. Generative UI is a first-class plugin output. Plugins declare od.genui.surfaces[] (§10.3) in the manifest; at runtime the agent emits form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt requests through OD's controlled event stream, and the product renderer owns the visual style; the user's answer lands in project metadata at run / conversation / project persist tier and is reused across subsequent multi-turn chats and runs in the same project. External AG-UI clients consume the same run through the adapter, not by replacing OD's internal renderer.

Non-goals (v1)

  • Replacing SKILL.md / claude-plugin spec — OD never forks.
  • Hosting plugin binaries — OD points to GitHub / CDN URLs; storage is the publisher's responsibility.
  • A signing/PKI ecosystem — capability gating relies on user consent, not signatures.
  • A web-hosted SaaS marketplace running OD agents on behalf of users — local-first only in v1.

3. Compatibility matrix — what makes a folder a valid plugin for whom

File present OD installs Claude Code / Cursor / Codex / Gemini CLI OpenClaw / Hermes awesome-agent-skills clawhub skills.sh
SKILL.md only yes yes yes yes yes yes
.claude-plugin/plugin.json only yes yes (claude) partial listable listable listable
open-design.json only metadata-only no no no no no
SKILL.md + open-design.json enriched yes yes yes yes yes
.claude-plugin/... + open-design.json enriched yes (claude) partial listable listable listable
SKILL.md + .claude-plugin/... + open-design.json fully enriched yes yes yes yes yes

The takeaway: SKILL.md is the lowest common denominator. Every plugin recommended for distribution should ship a SKILL.md so it lands cleanly in every major catalog, then add open-design.json to gain OD's product surface.

A folder that contains only open-design.json is not a runnable plugin in v1; it is a metadata-only preset. OD may read it to show a marketplace card, aggregate remote references, or act as a future install stub, but it cannot trigger an agent run and cannot be listed in cross-agent catalogs. od plugin doctor must mark this shape as metadata-only and prompt the author to add SKILL.md or .claude-plugin/plugin.json before publishing it as a runnable plugin.

4. Plugin folder shape

my-plugin/
├── SKILL.md                          # required for portability; anchors agent behavior
├── .claude-plugin/                   # optional: claude-plugin compat (commands/agents/hooks/.mcp.json)
│   └── plugin.json
├── open-design.json                  # optional sidecar — unlocks OD product surface
├── README.md                         # standard catalog readme
├── preview/                          # OD preview assets
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── poster.png
│   └── demo.mp4
├── examples/                         # sample outputs (rendered on detail page)
│   └── b2b-saas/index.html
├── assets/                           # files staged into project cwd at run time
├── skills/                           # nested skills (bundle plugins)
├── design-systems/                   # nested DESIGN.md(s)
├── craft/                            # nested craft .md(s)
└── plugins/                          # nested claude-plugins (bundle plugins)

Rules of authorship:

  • SKILL.md body never carries OD-specific metadata; it stays clean and portable.
  • open-design.json only ever points at SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft files; it never duplicates their bodies.
  • Existing OD-specific frontmatter on SKILL.md (the od: namespace already documented in skills-protocol.md and used in skills/blog-post/SKILL.md) is honored as a fallback for plugins without open-design.json. We do not deprecate it; we layer over it.
  • A runnable v1 plugin must contain at least one of SKILL.md or .claude-plugin/plugin.json. open-design.json does not define agent behavior by itself; it only tells OD how to display, resolve, and apply that behavior.

5. open-design.json — schema v1

{
  "$schema": "https://open-design.ai/schemas/plugin.v1.json",
  "specVersion": "1.0.0",
  "name": "make-a-deck",
  "title": "Make a deck",
  "title_i18n": { "en": "Make a deck", "zh-CN": "制作 Deck" },
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Generate a 12-slide investor deck from a one-line brief.",
  "description_i18n": {
    "en": "Generate a 12-slide investor deck from a one-line brief.",
    "zh-CN": "根据一句 brief 生成 12 页投资人 deck。"
  },
  "author":   { "name": "Open Design", "url": "https://open-design.ai" },
  "license":  "MIT",
  "homepage": "https://github.com/open-design/plugins/make-a-deck",
  "icon":     "./icon.svg",
  "tags":     ["deck", "marketing", "investor"],

  "compat": {
    "agentSkills":   [{ "path": "./SKILL.md" }],
    "claudePlugins": [{ "path": "./.claude-plugin/plugin.json" }]
  },

  "od": {
    "kind": "skill",
    "taskKind": "new-generation",
    "mode": "deck",
    "platform": "desktop",
    "scenario": "marketing",
    "engineRequirements": { "od": ">=0.4.0" },

    "preview": {
      "type": "html",
      "entry":  "./preview/index.html",
      "poster": "./preview/poster.png",
      "video":  "./preview/demo.mp4",
      "gif":    "./preview/demo.gif"
    },

    "useCase": {
      "query": {
        "en": "Make a 12-slide investor deck for a Series A SaaS startup targeting {{audience}} on {{topic}}.",
        "zh-CN": "为一家面向 {{audience}}、主题是 {{topic}} 的 A 轮 SaaS 初创公司制作一份 12 页投资人 deck。"
      },
      "exampleOutputs": [
        { "path": "./examples/b2b-saas/", "title": "B2B SaaS deck" }
      ]
    },

    "context": {
      "skills":         [{ "ref": "./skills/deck-skeleton" }],
      "designSystem":   { "ref": "linear-clone" },
      "craft":          ["typography", "deck-pacing"],
      "assets":         ["./assets/sample-data.csv"],
      "claudePlugins":  [{ "ref": "./plugins/code-review" }],
      "mcp": [
        { "name": "tavily", "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@tavily/mcp"] }
      ],
      "atoms": ["discovery-question-form", "todo-write", "research-search"]
    },

    "pipeline": {
      "stages": [
        { "id": "discovery",  "atoms": ["discovery-question-form"] },
        { "id": "plan",       "atoms": ["direction-picker", "todo-write"] },
        { "id": "generate",   "atoms": ["file-write", "live-artifact"] },
        { "id": "critique",   "atoms": ["critique-theater"], "repeat": true,
          "until": "critique.score>=4 || iterations>=3" }
      ]
    },

    "genui": {
      "surfaces": [
        {
          "id": "audience-clarify",
          "kind": "form",
          "persist": "conversation",
          "trigger": { "stageId": "discovery", "atom": "discovery-question-form" },
          "schema": {
            "type": "object",
            "required": ["audience"],
            "properties": {
              "audience": { "type": "string", "enum": ["VC", "Customer", "Internal"] },
              "tone":     { "type": "string" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "direction-pick",
          "kind": "choice",
          "persist": "conversation",
          "trigger": { "stageId": "plan", "atom": "direction-picker" },
          "schema": {
            "type": "object",
            "required": ["direction"],
            "properties": { "direction": { "type": "string" } }
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "media-spend-approval",
          "kind": "confirmation",
          "persist": "run",
          "trigger": { "atom": "media-image" },
          "capabilitiesRequired": ["mcp"]
        }
      ]
    },

    "connectors": {
      "required": [
        { "id": "slack",  "tools": ["channels.list", "messages.search"] },
        { "id": "notion", "tools": ["pages.create", "blocks.append"] }
      ],
      "optional": [
        { "id": "google_drive", "tools": ["files.list"] }
      ]
    },

    "inputs": [
      { "name": "topic",    "label": "Topic",    "type": "string", "required": true },
      { "name": "audience", "label": "Audience", "type": "select",
        "options": ["VC", "Customer", "Internal"] }
    ],

    "capabilities": ["prompt:inject", "fs:read", "connector:slack", "connector:notion"]
  }
}

5.1 Field reference

  • compat.* — relative paths to inherited files. The loader concatenates their content into the OD prompt stack assembled by composeSystemPrompt().
  • specVersion — the Open Design plugin spec version used to interpret the manifest. This is distinct from plugin version and is frozen into apply snapshots for replay.
  • version — the plugin package version. Bump it whenever behavior, metadata, pipeline, inputs, or bundled assets change in a way users may need to audit.
  • title_i18n / description_i18n — optional localized display metadata. Keep title and description as English fallbacks; UI surfaces resolve requested locale, base language, English, then the first available value.
  • od.kind — registry classification (skill / scenario / atom / bundle).
  • od.taskKind — one of the four product scenarios (new-generation / code-migration / figma-migration / tune-collab, see §1 "Four product scenarios"). Drives marketplace filters, default input templates, and the recommended pipeline starting point.
  • od.preview — drives the marketplace card and detail page. entry is served sandboxed via the daemon (the existing /api/skills/:id/example plumbing extended to plugins).
  • od.useCase.query — the exact text that lands in the brief field on click-to-use. It may be a legacy string or a locale map keyed by BCP-47-style locale tags (for example { "en": "...", "zh-CN": "..." }). Apply-time resolution tries the requested locale, base language, en, then the first available value. {{var}} placeholders bind to od.inputs.
  • od.context.* — typed chips that hydrate the ContextChipStrip above the input. Each entry compiles to a ContextItem (§5.2).
  • od.context.atomsunordered set declaring the atoms a plugin needs. The daemon uses them in default order; intended for simple plugins that don't customize flow.
  • od.pipelineordered pipeline in which the plugin author explicitly composes atoms into stages, loops, and termination conditions (§10.1). When both od.pipeline and od.context.atoms are present, pipeline wins; context.atoms is treated only as chip-strip metadata.
  • od.genui.surfaces[]Generative UI declaration: the set of surfaces the agent may trigger during a run (§10.3). Each entry's kind is one of the v1 built-ins (form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt); persist decides where the answer is remembered (run / conversation / project); trigger binds the surface to a specific stage / atom so the agent cannot summon arbitrary UI; schema is a JSON Schema used to render the default form and validate the answer. Surface kinds not declared in the manifest cannot be raised at runtimeod plugin doctor plus daemon runtime jointly enforce that no unknown UI is ever produced.
  • od.connectorsconnector dependency declaration: required[] lists the daemon-built-in connectors (apps/daemon/src/connectors/, currently Composio-backed) the plugin needs, each { id, tools[] } mapping to ConnectorCatalogDefinition.id and a subset of its allowedToolNames; optional[] is "use if connected, degrade gracefully if not". od plugin doctor validates at install/apply time: (a) every id exists in connectorService.listAll(); (b) every tools[] is a subset of that connector's allowedToolNames; (c) every required[].id has a matching connector:<id> capability declared (§5.3 / §9). Required connectors that are not yet connected at apply time auto-derive an oauth-prompt GenUI surface (§10.3.1 with route: 'connector'); optional connectors do not, but the agent can trigger one explicitly during the run. Plugins never hold OAuth tokens directly — tokens stay in <dataDir>/connectors/credentials.json; the plugin only declares dependencies.
  • od.inputs — surfaced as form fields on the detail page; their values template useCase.query and any string-valued context entries.
  • od.capabilities — declarative; defaults to ['prompt:inject'] if omitted on a restricted plugin.

5.2 ContextItem union (TypeScript)

export type ContextItem =
  | { kind: 'skill';         id: string; label: string }
  | { kind: 'design-system'; id: string; label: string; primary?: boolean }
  | { kind: 'craft';         id: string; label: string }
  | { kind: 'asset';         path: string; label: string; mime?: string }
  | { kind: 'mcp';           name: string; label: string; command?: string }
  | { kind: 'claude-plugin'; id: string; label: string }
  | { kind: 'atom';          id: string; label: string }
  | { kind: 'plugin';        id: string; label: string };

Lives in a new packages/contracts/src/plugins/context.ts (TypeScript-only, no runtime deps — matches the contracts boundary in the root AGENTS.md).

5.3 Capability vocabulary

Capability Effect granted
prompt:inject SKILL/DESIGN/craft content injected into system prompt (always allowed)
fs:read Stage plugin assets into project cwd during project create / run start
fs:write Plugin-owned post-run write (e.g. publish artifacts)
mcp Daemon writes .mcp.json during run start so MCP servers from the plugin start
subprocess / bash Claude-plugin hooks execute, agent-callable bash tools enabled
network Plugin scripts may make outbound HTTP
connector Coarse: allow the plugin to call any connected Composio tool through the daemon connector subsystem (apps/daemon/src/connectors/)
connector:<id> Scoped (recommended): allow only the connector named <id> (e.g. connector:slack). When a plugin declares multiple connector:<id> capabilities, only those listed get a tool token; connector:<id> takes precedence over the coarse connector.

Capabilities are not isolated strings; the resolver must compute implied capabilities:

  • Declaring mcp with any command that is not an OD built-in stdio tool implies subprocess.
  • MCP commands that use npx, uvx, pipx, remote URLs, or package-manager installs imply network.
  • Declaring .claude-plugin hooks implies subprocess; if a hook reads bundled assets, it also requires fs:read.
  • bash and subprocess are elevated capabilities: once granted, a plugin can effectively bypass fine-grained fs:* / network limits. The UI and CLI must present them as elevated capabilities and must not preselect them in a low-risk "Grant all" path.
  • Declaring od.connectors.required[] implies a connector:<id> for each required[].id; the resolver appends any missing connector:<id> to capabilitiesRequired, and restricted plugins fail with exit 66 / §9.1 unless the user grants them.
  • connector:<id> does not imply network: connector calls always go through the daemon's HTTP path, so the plugin itself never opens an outbound socket. The coarse connector capability, on the other hand, is treated as elevated (any connected provider becomes reachable) and must be confirmed explicitly in UI/CLI.
  • Provider credentials are not a v1 capability. Plugins cannot directly declare access to ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, media provider keys, or connector secrets. Capabilities that need credentials must go through OD-owned first-party atoms / tools.

5.4 SKILL.md frontmatter to PluginManifest mapping

When a plugin has no open-design.json, but its SKILL.md already contains the od: frontmatter defined in skills-protocol.md, adapters/agent-skill.ts synthesizes a minimal PluginManifest. The mapping must be stable so the legacy skill protocol and the new plugin schema do not drift into two semantics:

SKILL.md field Plugin manifest field Rule
name name, fallback title Humanize name when title is absent
description description Preserved as-is
od.mode od.mode Preserved as-is; if absent, use the keyword inference from skills-protocol.md
od.preview od.preview Only type and entry enter the v1 manifest; reload is kept as adapter metadata and does not enter the public contract
od.design_system.requires od.context.designSystem true means use the active project design system at run time; sections is preserved in resolved context as a prompt-pruning hint
od.craft.requires od.context.craft Slug array maps directly
od.inputs od.inputs stringstring, integernumber, enumselect, uploadfile, valuesoptions; min / max are preserved as future metadata, and v1 UI may ignore but must not discard them
od.parameters adapter metadata v1 plugin apply does not render live sliders; fields are preserved for Phase 4 and do not enter ApplyResult.inputs
od.outputs projectMetadata hints Used for artifact bookkeeping and preview defaults, not surfaced as user-editable inputs
od.capabilities_required od.capabilities Map only capabilities that can be expressed; unknown capabilities are kept in compatWarnings[], and od plugin doctor must surface them

If open-design.json and SKILL.md frontmatter both exist, open-design.json wins, but the loader must preserve adapter warnings. Authors can migrate incrementally: first keep the old skill runnable as-is, then add OD marketplace metadata.

6. open-design-marketplace.json — federated catalog

Mirrors anthropics/skills/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json so existing community catalogs need only a rename to be reusable.

{
  "$schema": "https://open-design.ai/schemas/marketplace.v1.json",
  "specVersion": "1.0.0",
  "name": "open-design-official",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "owner":    { "name": "Open Design", "url": "https://open-design.ai" },
  "metadata": { "description": "First-party plugins", "version": "1.0.0" },
  "plugins": [
    { "name": "make-a-deck", "version": "1.0.0", "source": "github:open-design/plugins/make-a-deck", "tags": ["deck"] },
    { "name": "tweet-card",  "version": "1.0.0", "source": "https://files.../tweet-card-1.0.0.tgz",  "tags": ["marketing"] }
  ]
}

The marketplace top-level version is the catalog snapshot version; every plugins[] entry also declares the listed plugin version. Installers still verify the target folder's own open-design.json after fetching, but registry search, audit logs, and marketplace refresh events can now reason about catalog and plugin versions before install.

Multiple marketplaces coexist — the user runs od marketplace add <url> to register additional indexes (Vercel's, OpenClaw's clawhub, an enterprise team's private catalog). By default, a user-added marketplace is only a discovery source and plugins from it still install as restricted; only the built-in official marketplace or a marketplace explicitly trusted through od marketplace add <url> --trust / od marketplace trust <id> can pass through default trusted status.

7. Discovery and install

7.1 Discovery tiers (unifies legacy skill locations and plugin locations)

Priority Path Resource shape Source
1 <projectCwd>/.open-design/plugins/<id>/ plugin bundle New; explicitly installed into the project and committed with user code
2 <projectCwd>/.claude/skills/<id>/ legacy SKILL.md Keeps the project-private skill path from skills-protocol.md compatible
3 <daemonDataDir>/plugins/<id>/ plugin bundle New; written by od plugin install under the daemon data root
4 ~/.open-design/skills/<id>/ legacy SKILL.md OD canonical skill install path; may symlink into other agents
5 ~/.claude/skills/<id>/ legacy SKILL.md Compatibility scan for external Claude Code / skills tooling
6 repo root skills/, design-systems/, craft/ bundled resources Existing first-party resources, unchanged

Conflict resolution uses normalized name / plugin id; lower numeric priority wins. Legacy SKILL.md locations are synthesized into plugin records by the adapter, but are not copied into <daemonDataDir>/plugins/ unless the user explicitly runs od plugin install. This keeps existing Claude skills zero-config while giving plugin bundles a clear install root.

7.2 Install sources

od plugin install ./folder
od plugin install github:owner/repo
od plugin install github:owner/repo@v1.2.0
od plugin install github:owner/repo/path/to/subfolder
od plugin install https://example.com/plugin.tar.gz
od plugin install make-a-deck                   # via configured marketplaces
od marketplace add https://.../open-design-marketplace.json

GitHub install path uses https://codeload.github.com/owner/repo/tar.gz/<ref>, no git binary required, with path-traversal guards and a configurable size cap.

8. The Apply pipeline

The plugin system exposes two apply surfaces; both call the same daemon endpoint and receive the same ApplyResult. In v1, apply is pure by default: it reads the manifest, templates the query, and returns context chips, inputs, asset refs, and MCP specs; it does not write the project cwd, copy assets, write .mcp.json, or start any process. Side effects happen later in POST /api/projects or POST /api/runs, after the same trust/capability gate runs.

  • Detail-page apply (deep): user navigates to /marketplace/:id, reviews the preview and capability checklist, clicks "Use this plugin". The composer is hydrated and the user lands back on Home or in the project. If the user cancels before sending, the daemon has no staged files to clean up.
  • Inline apply (shallow, the primary product surface): the input box on Home and the input box inside an existing project (ChatComposer) both render an inline plugins rail directly below them. Clicking a plugin card's explicit Use action applies the plugin in place — no navigation, no context loss. The brief input prefills, the chip strip above the input populates, and the plugin's od.inputs form blanks render between the input and the Send button. The user fills a few blanks, tweaks the brief, hits Send. This is the natural-language, fill-in-the-blank interaction that drives both project creation and per-project tasks. If the brief already contains user text, the UI must confirm before replacing it.
  • @ plugin mentions are additive context, not apply. Selecting a plugin from the @ picker removes the mention token, adds a removable plugin context chip, and never hydrates od.useCase.query. Users can select multiple plugins this way and combine them with skills or MCP context; hovering a plugin result should expose plugin details/parameters so the user can decide whether to explicitly Use it.

The two surfaces share the same primitives (InlinePluginsRail, ContextChipStrip, PluginInputsForm) and the same applyPlugin() state helper. The only difference is the terminal endpoint: Home calls POST /api/projects to create a new project; ChatComposer calls POST /api/runs to create a new task in the active project.

8.1 Sequence diagrams

Mode A — Detail-page apply (deep, after browsing the marketplace):

sequenceDiagram
  participant U as User
  participant W as Web /marketplace/:id
  participant D as Daemon
  participant FS as PluginFS
  participant H as Home /
  participant A as Agent run

  U->>W: open detail
  W->>D: GET /api/plugins/:id
  D->>FS: read manifest + preview + capability state
  D-->>W: PluginDetail
  U->>W: click "Use this plugin"
  W->>D: POST /api/plugins/:id/apply
  D->>FS: resolve od.context refs<br/>(skills, DS, craft, atoms, assets, mcp)
  D-->>W: ApplyResult { query, contextItems, assets, mcpServers, projectMetadata }
  W->>H: navigate, hydrate NewProjectPanel
  Note over H: brief = useCase.query<br/>chip strip = contextItems<br/>inputs form = od.inputs<br/>attachments = asset refs
  U->>H: fill blanks, tweak, Send
  H->>D: POST /api/projects + POST /api/runs
  D->>D: stage assets / write .mcp.json<br/>only after capability gate
  D->>A: composeSystemPrompt() with merged context
  A-->>U: streamed design output
Loading

Mode B — Inline apply (shallow, primary; runs on Home and inside ChatComposer):

sequenceDiagram
  participant U as User
  participant Rail as InlinePluginsRail<br/>(below input)
  participant C as Composer<br/>(NewProjectPanel or ChatComposer)
  participant D as Daemon
  participant A as Agent run

  Note over C,Rail: User is staring at an input box;<br/>plugin cards listed below it
  U->>Rail: click plugin card (no navigation)
  Rail->>D: POST /api/plugins/:id/apply<br/>{ projectId? }
  D-->>Rail: ApplyResult
  Rail->>C: hydrate in place
  Note over C: brief = useCase.query<br/>chip strip = contextItems<br/>inputs form = od.inputs (visible blanks)<br/>attachments = asset refs
  U->>C: fill required blanks, edit brief, Send
  alt Home (no project yet)
    C->>D: POST /api/projects + POST /api/runs
  else Existing project
    C->>D: POST /api/runs { projectId, pluginId }
  end
  D->>D: stage assets / write .mcp.json<br/>only after capability gate
  D->>A: composeSystemPrompt() with merged context
  A-->>U: streamed design output
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8.2 ApplyResult shape (new contract)

export interface ApplyResult {
  query: string;
  contextItems: ContextItem[];
  inputs: InputFieldSpec[];
  assets: PluginAssetRef[];
  mcpServers: McpServerSpec[];
  pipeline?: PluginPipeline;
  genuiSurfaces?: GenUISurfaceSpec[];
  projectMetadata: Partial<ProjectMetadata>;
  trust: 'trusted' | 'restricted';
  capabilitiesGranted: string[];
  capabilitiesRequired: string[];
  appliedPlugin: AppliedPluginSnapshot;
}

export interface AppliedPluginSnapshot {
  snapshotId: string;
  pluginId: string;
  pluginSpecVersion: string;
  pluginVersion: string;
  manifestSourceDigest: string;
  sourceMarketplaceId?: string;
  pinnedRef?: string;
  inputs: Record<string, string | number | boolean>;
  resolvedContext: ResolvedContext;
  capabilitiesGranted: string[];
  assetsStaged: PluginAssetRef[];
  taskKind: 'new-generation' | 'code-migration' | 'figma-migration' | 'tune-collab';
  appliedAt: number;

  // Mirror of the §11.4 SQLite columns; the snapshot freezes the apply-time view so replay is reproducible
  // even after the plugin upgrades.
  connectorsRequired: PluginConnectorRef[];     // from manifest od.connectors.required[]
  connectorsResolved: PluginConnectorBinding[]; // (id, accountLabel, status) actually connected at apply time
  mcpServers: McpServerSpec[];                  // MCP server set that was active at apply time; same payload as ApplyResult.mcpServers but frozen
}

export interface PluginConnectorRef {
  id: string;          // must exist in the daemon connector catalog
  tools: string[];     // must be a subset of the connector's allowedToolNames
  required: boolean;   // false = came from od.connectors.optional[]
}

export interface PluginConnectorBinding extends PluginConnectorRef {
  accountLabel?: string;       // taken from ConnectorDetail.accountLabel
  status: 'connected' | 'pending' | 'unavailable';
}

export interface PluginAssetRef {
  path: string;
  src: string;
  mime?: string;
  stageAt: 'project-create' | 'run-start';
}

export interface InputFieldSpec {
  name: string;
  label: string;
  type: 'string' | 'text' | 'select' | 'number' | 'boolean';
  required?: boolean;
  options?: string[];
  placeholder?: string;
  default?: string | number | boolean;
}

Lives in packages/contracts/src/plugins/apply.ts. Re-exported from packages/contracts/src/index.ts.

8.2.1 Snapshot persistence and reproducible runs

appliedPlugin is not a decorative field; it is the contract between "plugin" and "run". Passing only pluginId is not enough, because:

  • A plugin can be upgraded between two runs via od plugin update.
  • The same pluginId may resolve to different git SHAs on different marketplaces.
  • Refs inside od.pipeline / od.context.* may point to a moving default branch.
  • Asset staging plans and capabilitiesGranted must match the view used when the prompt was generated.

The daemon therefore must:

  1. At apply time — hash the hydrated manifest plus inputs into manifestSourceDigest, then write pluginSpecVersion, pluginVersion, pinnedRef, sourceMarketplaceId, resolvedContext, capabilitiesGranted, assetsStaged, connectorsRequired / connectorsResolved (cross-checked against the connector subsystem's current status), and mcpServers (the MCP server set active at apply time) into appliedPlugin and return it to the caller.
  2. At project create / run start — write the client-supplied appliedPlugin (or the daemon's server-side re-resolved snapshot) into the SQLite applied_plugin_snapshots table (§11.4) and FK-link it from runs / conversations.
  3. Replayod run replay <runId> and od plugin export <runId> must reconstruct prompt and assets from the snapshot rather than the live manifest, so old runs remain reproducible after plugin upgrades.
  4. Audit — UI ProjectView shows snapshot id + version + digest at the top; artifact provenance (§11.5 ArtifactManifest) reverse-resolves plugin source via the snapshot id.

Only the daemon writes AppliedPluginSnapshot; CLI/UI clients are read-only. Plugin upgrades or marketplace ref drift cause od plugin doctor to mark affected historical snapshots as stale, but never to rewrite them: reproducibility wins over freshness.

8.3 Inline od.inputs form

When the applied plugin declares od.inputs, the composer renders a highlighted PluginInputsForm inside the brief input surface. Behavior:

  • Required fields gate Send (the button is disabled with a tooltip listing missing fields).
  • Plugins with required inputs may be selected before all answers are present. The client should render the form from manifest-declared od.inputs, then apply/pin the snapshot once required values are available.
  • As the user types, {{var}} placeholders inside useCase.query and inside any string-valued context entry re-render live, so the user sees the final brief and final chip labels before sending.
  • The form is compact by default — short fields render inline like fill-in-the-blank slots; select, boolean, and file fields use native controls, and long text fields expand within the same input surface.
  • On Send, input values are sent alongside the run request; the daemon also passes them into the prompt under a small ## Plugin inputs block so the agent has the literal user-supplied values, not just the post-template brief.
  • Inputs persist in component state until the user clears the chip strip — re-applying the same plugin on the same composer pre-fills last-used values.

8.4 Apply inside an existing project (new chat task)

ChatComposer (per-project conversation input, apps/web/src/components/ChatComposer.tsx) renders the same InlinePluginsRail under its input. The rail surfaces "what next?" plugins, filtered by the active project's kind / scenario / current artifacts. Clicking a card calls POST /api/plugins/:id/apply with the current projectId; the daemon resolves context against the project (skipping any context items already pinned at project creation, e.g. the design system) and returns an ApplyResult whose query and chips hydrate the composer in place. Send creates a new run via POST /api/runs (existing endpoint), now accepting an optional pluginId so the agent runtime composes prompt with the plugin context.

Net effect: a single project can be steered through many plugin-driven tasks — "first apply make-a-deck, refine; then apply tweet-card to repackage the same brief into social posts; then apply critique-theater to grade everything" — all without leaving the project. Each task is one chat turn; the project history is the audit log.

8.5 Generative UI runtime contract

apply already records the plugin-declared genuiSurfaces into the AppliedPluginSnapshot, but the surface lifecycle actually plays out during the run. Full wire-format and persistence rules live in §10.3; here are the four hand-off rules between the apply pipeline and the GenUI runtime:

  1. Apply does not render any surface. Apply remains a pure resolver. UI / CLI surfaces only translate genuiSurfaces into a "this long task may ask you these questions" advisory card. As soon as a plugin declares an oauth-prompt, the detail-page capability checklist gains a row "This plugin will ask you to authorize ", so the user knows ahead of Send what surfaces may pop during the run.
  2. At runtime, the agent triggers surfaces only through declared atoms. Each surface's trigger.atom (and optional trigger.stageId) acts as an allowlist: the daemon rejects any genui_surface_request event coming from an undeclared atom — this is the enforcement point for "no UI is ever produced unless declared" (doctor + runtime double-check).
  3. Existing answers in the same project are reused. When persist is project or conversation, the daemon checks the genui_surfaces table (§11.4) before emitting a request; if a valid stored value exists (not expired, not invalidated), it short-circuits with that value and never broadcasts the request. This is exactly how "the plugin creates a project, the user keeps interacting across multiple turns and conversations, and these meta-info are reused" lands in practice.
  4. A non-response does not block the run forever. Every surface declares timeout (default 5 minutes) and onTimeout (abort / default / skip); the CLI exposes the same surface description on the ND-JSON stream as a genui_surface_request event, so headless automation can answer it from another process via od ui respond --surface-id …, or skip cleanly when not needed (§10.3).

ApplyResult.genuiSurfaces plus appliedPlugin.snapshotId jointly form the GenUI contract between plugin and project: the snapshot is immutable; once a surface answer is written into genui_surfaces, the project owns it and any subsequent plugin (even a different plugin or a different conversation) can look it up by surface.id if it also declares the same id with a compatible schema.

9. Trust and capabilities

flowchart LR
  M[Plugin manifest] --> C{trust + capabilities}
  C -->|"prompt:inject only<br/>(restricted default)"| P1[inject SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft]
  C -->|"+ fs:read"| P2[stage assets into cwd]
  C -->|"+ mcp"| P3[write .mcp.json]
  C -->|"+ subprocess / bash"| P4[register claude plugin commands/hooks]
  C -->|"+ connector:&lt;id&gt;"| P5[issue scoped tool token<br/>for /api/tools/connectors/execute]
  P1 & P2 & P3 & P4 & P5 --> R[run agent]
Loading

A restricted plugin can never reach P3/P4/P5 unless the user grants the capability — either through od plugin trust <id> or "Grant capabilities" on the detail page. Only two sources are trusted by default: repo-bundled first-party plugins and the official OD marketplace. User-added third-party marketplaces are discovery sources; plugins from them still install as restricted unless the marketplace itself is explicitly trusted, or an individual plugin is granted capabilities by id + version + capability.

Connector capability gate. Plugin calls into Composio connectors travel through daemon HTTP (/api/tools/connectors/execute, served by apps/daemon/src/tool-tokens.ts issuing scoped tool tokens) — a different path from MCP. A restricted plugin granted mcp does not automatically gain connector access; it must hold either the coarse connector capability or the specific connector:<id>. When the daemon issues a tool token for a plugin run, it embeds the applied_plugin_snapshot_id and the current capabilitiesGranted; on each /api/tools/connectors/execute call, the daemon re-checks that the requested connector_id is on the granted list (a trusted plugin implicitly carries connector:*). Otherwise the call returns 403. The daemon module that owns this check is apps/daemon/src/plugins/connector-gate.ts (§11.3).

Trust records must bind to provenance, not just a name:

  • pluginId
  • specVersion
  • version or resolved git SHA / archive digest
  • source marketplace id, if any
  • granted capabilities
  • granted at / updated at

When a plugin upgrades, its resolved ref changes, or its source marketplace changes, elevated capabilities (mcp, subprocess, bash, network, connector, connector:<id>) must be confirmed again.

9.1 Headless capability grant flow (CLI / automation)

The UI capability gate is a modal + checklist; headless / CI / third-party code agent flows complete the same gate through the three mechanisms below. The behavior is locked here so it does not depend on an interactive prompt:

  1. Pre-trust (recommended for hosted / CI).

    od plugin trust make-a-deck   --caps fs:read,mcp,subprocess
    od plugin trust make-a-digest --caps fs:read,connector:slack,connector:notion
    od plugin trust make-a-deck   --caps all          # equivalent to all capabilities the manifest declares

    Writes to SQLite installed_plugins.capabilities_granted. Applies to all subsequent apply / run calls until the plugin is upgraded or the source marketplace changes (§9 provenance rules), at which point re-confirmation is required. connector:<id> is given as the full id (connector:slack, connector:notion); globs are not accepted.

  2. Per-call temporary grant.

    od plugin apply make-a-deck   --project p_abc --grant-caps fs:read,mcp --json
    od plugin apply make-a-digest --project p_abc --grant-caps fs:read,connector:slack --json
    od plugin run   make-a-deck   --project p_abc --grant-caps fs:read --follow

    Scoped to the AppliedPluginSnapshot produced by this apply only. Persisted in snapshot.capabilitiesGranted; not written back to installed_plugins.

  3. Call without authorization → recoverable error. When a plugin needs capabilities not granted via either path above, the daemon does not silently degrade, prompt, or block: the CLI exits immediately with exit code 66 and a structured JSON error on stderr:

    {
      "error": {
        "code": "capabilities-required",
        "message": "Plugin make-a-deck requires capabilities not yet granted.",
        "data": {
          "pluginId": "make-a-deck",
          "pluginVersion": "1.0.0",
          "required": ["mcp", "subprocess"],
          "granted": ["prompt:inject", "fs:read"],
          "remediation": [
            "od plugin trust make-a-deck --caps mcp,subprocess",
            "or pass --grant-caps mcp,subprocess to this command"
          ]
        }
      }
    }

    On reading exit 66, a code agent can retry with --grant-caps, degrade gracefully, or surface the remediation text to the upstream user. The HTTP equivalent is 409 Conflict with the same body shape; desktop UI uses it to auto-build the capability checklist.

Elevated capabilities (bash / subprocess / network, plus the coarse connector without an :<id> suffix) never support --grant-caps all shorthand on its own: the CLI requires each one to be listed explicitly to prevent scripted over-authorization. connector:<id> is the scoped form of an elevated capability and may appear inside --caps all, but hosted operators typically prefer enumerating each connector id for audit.

9.2 Preview sandbox

Plugin previews may come from untrusted GitHub repos or archives, so they cannot run with the same privileges as the OD app. od.preview.entry HTML previews must follow these constraints:

  • Preview iframes start with sandbox="allow-scripts" only. They do not get allow-same-origin, allow-forms, allow-popups, or allow-downloads by default. If a first-party preview needs an extra flag, it must declare that in the manifest and od plugin doctor must mark it as an elevated preview.
  • Preview content is served through a read-only daemon preview endpoint. It cannot read /api/*, cannot attach Authorization headers, cannot access provider credentials, and cannot access the project filesystem.
  • Preview responses use a dedicated CSP: default-src 'none'; img-src 'self' data: blob:; media-src 'self' data: blob:; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; connect-src 'none'; frame-ancestors 'self'. Remote fonts, remote images, and analytics are rejected in v1.
  • Preview asset paths must pass normalized relative path checks: reject absolute paths, .. traversal, symlink escapes, hidden credential files, and resources over the size cap.
  • A restricted plugin may still render a preview, but preview rendering does not grant plugin capabilities. MCP, bash, network, and asset staging only happen after the run-start capability gate.

10. First-party atoms — the atomic pipeline plugins assemble

Promote what already exists in apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts and the daemon-backed bash tools into named, declarative, plugin-assemblable atoms. An atom is not a standalone capability tag — it is a node in OD's long-running design-agent pipeline that plugins can compose into ordered stages and loop over via devloop. v1 is still declarative: the daemon already knows how to emit prompt fragments and tool gating for each atom; plugins only declare pipeline topology.

Atom id Source today What it does taskKind fit
discovery-question-form DISCOVERY_AND_PHILOSOPHY in system.ts Turn-1 question form for ambiguous briefs new-generation, tune-collab
direction-picker same 3–5 direction picker before final new-generation, tune-collab
todo-write same TodoWrite-driven plan all
file-read / file-write / file-edit code-agent native File ops all
research-search od research search (apps/daemon/src/cli.ts) Tavily web research new-generation
media-image / media-video / media-audio od media generate Media generation with provider config new-generation, tune-collab
live-artifact MCP mcp__live-artifacts__* Create/refresh live artifacts all
connector MCP mcp__connectors__* Composio connectors all
critique-theater system.ts critique addendum 5-dim panel critique; devloop convergence signal all
code-import (planned) tbd: repo handle ingestion Clone / read existing repo, extract design-relevant structure code-migration
design-extract (planned) tbd Extract design tokens from source code / Figma / screenshot code-migration, figma-migration
figma-extract (planned) tbd: Figma REST + node walk Extract Figma node tree + tokens + assets figma-migration
token-map (planned) tbd Map extracted tokens onto the active design system code-migration, figma-migration
rewrite-plan / patch-edit (planned) tbd Long-running multi-file rewrite planning + small-step patches code-migration, tune-collab
diff-review (planned) tbd Render rewrite as diff for user/agent review code-migration, tune-collab
handoff (planned) tbd Push artifact to cli / other code agents / cloud / desktop surfaces tune-collab

(planned) atoms are not implemented in v1, but their IDs are reserved here and in §5 schema to avoid a future name churn. GET /api/atoms returns only implemented atoms in v1; planned atoms emit a clear "not yet implemented" warning from od plugin doctor rather than a generic "unknown atom" error.

10.1 od.pipeline — the ordered atomic pipeline plugins assemble

export interface PluginPipeline {
  stages: PipelineStage[];
}

export interface PipelineStage {
  id: string;
  atoms: string[];
  repeat?: boolean;
  until?: string;
  onFailure?: 'abort' | 'skip' | 'retry';
}

Constraints:

  • stages[*].id is unique within a pipeline; the same atom may appear in multiple stages (typical example: critique runs after generate and again before final handoff).
  • Default order is array order; v1 does not support DAG branching — if a plugin needs branches, the author should split it into chained plugins.
  • until is a lightweight expression evaluated by the daemon (only comparisons and known signal variables: critique.score, iterations, user.confirmed, preview.ok); it is not arbitrary JS. od plugin doctor validates syntax.
  • When od.pipeline is omitted, the daemon picks a reference pipeline based on od.taskKind (the typical sequence listed for that scenario in §1 "Four product scenarios").

The pipeline is declarative; the agent does not read pipeline JSON directly. The daemon compiles each stage into a system-prompt block with an anchor id and emits pipeline_stage_started / pipeline_stage_completed SSE/ND-JSON events (aligned with the existing PersistedAgentEvent discriminated union) on stage entry/exit. UI and CLI render those as progress bars / stage timelines / devloop iteration counters.

10.2 Devloop — artifact-driven iterative convergence

A stage's repeat: true flag promotes single-step execution into a loop:

  1. The agent completes the stage once.
  2. The daemon evaluates the stage's until condition by reading the most recent critique-theater output, the live-artifact preview state, the user's response, or a built-in iterations >= N counter.
  3. Condition unmet → re-enter the stage with the previous round's artifact as input. Condition met → advance to the next stage.
  4. The user can break out anytime via od run respond <runId> --json '{"action":"break-loop"}' or the UI "Stop refining" button.

Two hard constraints on devloop:

  • until is required. Pipelines with repeat: true but no until fail od plugin doctor and the daemon refuses to execute them.
  • Iteration ceiling. The daemon enforces iterations <= 10 (configurable via OD_MAX_DEVLOOP_ITERATIONS) to keep a buggy plugin from burning provider quota in an infinite loop.

Each devloop iteration writes the round's artifact diff, critique output, and consumed tokens into runs.devloop_iterations (§11.4 SQLite extension), which feeds audit and a future per-iteration pricing model.

GET /api/atoms returns atoms plus the known reference pipelines. The current implementation has already started the self-hosting path: first-party atom plugins live under plugins/_official/atoms/**, bundled scenario plugins live under plugins/_official/scenarios/**, and renderActiveStageBlock(stageId, bodies) injects the active stage's atom bodies into the prompt. The system prompt is therefore pipeline-aware today, but not yet fully data-driven: the base Open Design designer prompt, discovery philosophy, and some entry-point defaults still live in daemon/product code. That is enough to ground the "plugins assemble the core pipeline" claim without pretending every byte of behavior has moved into plugins.

10.3 Generative UI: AG-UI–inspired surfaces

OD adopts the useful part of CopilotKit / the AG-UI protocol: an agent can ask for interactive UI during a run. OD does not let the agent freely invent app UI or styling in the main product surface. v1 ships our own GenUISurface* discriminated union and reuses the existing PersistedAgentEvent SSE / ND-JSON channel; @open-design/agui-adapter projects those events into AG-UI canonical events for external clients.

The product rule is: agent/plugin output is data; OD owns the renderer. A plugin can declare a form, choice, confirmation, or oauth-prompt surface, with schema and prompt data. The web / desktop / CLI renderer decides layout, typography, controls, validation affordances, accessibility, and persistence UX. This keeps plugin UI extensible across scenarios while preserving a coherent product system. Arbitrary visual or code output belongs in generated artifacts, or behind the separate custom-component sandbox and genui:custom-component capability gate; it does not replace the built-in renderer for core collaboration UI.

10.3.1 Four built-in surface kinds (v1)

kind Purpose Default render Likely trigger atom Default persist
form Collect structured info (audience, brand, target, resolution, etc.) JSON-Schema–driven form rendered from schema discovery-question-form, media-image, any atom needing parameters conversation
choice Pick one of N options (direction, headline, version) Card grid or radio list direction-picker, critique-theater conversation
confirmation Two-way confirm (continue / cancel, approve / reject) Inline Yes/No buttons High-cost atoms such as media-image or subprocess-class hooks run
oauth-prompt Launch third-party OAuth (Figma, Notion, Slack, etc.) Modal + guidance copy Connector / MCP authorization project

Each surface carries the following v1 fields:

export interface GenUISurfaceSpec {
  id: string;                                  // unique within a plugin
  kind: 'form' | 'choice' | 'confirmation' | 'oauth-prompt';
  persist: 'run' | 'conversation' | 'project';
  trigger?: { stageId?: string; atom?: string };
  schema?: object;                             // JSON Schema (required for form / choice)
  prompt?: string;                             // question / instruction shown by the default renderer
  capabilitiesRequired?: string[];             // e.g. oauth-prompt with route='connector' needs 'connector:<id>'
  timeout?: number;                            // ms, default 300_000
  onTimeout?: 'abort' | 'default' | 'skip';    // default 'abort'
  default?: unknown;                           // fallback value when onTimeout='default'

  // oauth-prompt only: which existing OAuth subsystem the daemon should route through
  oauth?: {
    route: 'connector' | 'mcp';                // v1 ships these two; 'plugin' is reserved for Phase 4
    connectorId?: string;                      // required when route='connector'; references od.connectors.required[].id
    mcpServerId?: string;                      // required when route='mcp'; references a name from the plugin's MCP server set
  };
}

oauth-prompt routing rules (locked in v1):

oauth.route Daemon behavior UI behavior Persistence
connector Reuses the existing apps/daemon/src/connectors/ flow: hits POST /api/connectors/:connectorId/connect/start for the redirect URL; on completion the token lands in <dataDir>/connectors/credentials.json Renders the connector card (the visual style of apps/web/src/components/ConnectorsBrowser.tsx) inside a modal or drawer; the user clicks through the standard connector OAuth genui_surfaces.value_json = { connectorId, accountLabel }; the token never enters SQLite
mcp Reuses POST /api/mcp/oauth/start; the token lands in <dataDir>/mcp-tokens.json Reuses the Settings → MCP servers OAuth visuals genui_surfaces.value_json = { mcpServerId }; the token never enters SQLite
plugin (Phase 4) Plugin supplies arbitrary third-party OAuth metadata; daemon goes through a generic PKCE adapter TBD TBD

od plugin doctor enforces at install / apply time that: (1) when oauth.route === 'connector', oauth.connectorId is present in the plugin's own od.connectors.required[] or od.connectors.optional[]; (2) when oauth.route === 'mcp', oauth.mcpServerId matches a name in the plugin's MCP server set.

Auto-derivation from od.connectors.required[]. If a plugin declares od.connectors.required[] but does not declare an explicit oauth-prompt surface, the daemon auto-derives one for each not-yet-connected required connector at apply time, with kind: 'oauth-prompt', persist: 'project', oauth.route: 'connector', and id: __auto_connector_<connectorId>. These implicit surfaces are still recorded in AppliedPluginSnapshot.genuiSurfaces, and they receive the same §10.3.3 cross-conversation reuse — a one-time authorization for the same connector inside a project means subsequent runs do not re-prompt. A plugin author may also declare a same-id surface explicitly to override the implicit one (custom prompt / schema).

10.3.2 Runtime events (joined into the SSE / ND-JSON PersistedAgentEvent union)

export type GenUIEvent =
  | { kind: 'genui_surface_request';   surfaceId: string; runId: string; payload: GenUIPayload; requestedAt: number }
  | { kind: 'genui_surface_response';  surfaceId: string; runId: string; value: unknown;          respondedAt: number; respondedBy: 'user' | 'agent' | 'auto' | 'cache' }
  | { kind: 'genui_surface_timeout';   surfaceId: string; runId: string; resolution: 'abort' | 'default' | 'skip' }
  | { kind: 'genui_state_synced';      surfaceId: string; runId: string; persistTier: 'run' | 'conversation' | 'project' };

genui_* events share the same SSE channel as pipeline_stage_* and message_chunk but carry a dedicated schema tag so desktop / web / CLI / other code agents can subscribe selectively.

10.3.3 Cross-conversation, cross-run persisted state

-- See §11.4 for the full migration; only the shape is reproduced here.
CREATE TABLE genui_surfaces (
  id                    TEXT PRIMARY KEY,         -- composite of (project_id, conversation_id?, surface_id) for project tier
  project_id            TEXT NOT NULL,
  conversation_id       TEXT,                     -- null when persist='project'
  run_id                TEXT,                     -- null when persist!='run'
  plugin_snapshot_id    TEXT NOT NULL,            -- §8.2.1
  surface_id            TEXT NOT NULL,            -- plugin-declared id
  kind                  TEXT NOT NULL,
  persist               TEXT NOT NULL,            -- run | conversation | project
  schema_digest         TEXT,                     -- digest of the JSON Schema; invalidates on schema drift
  value_json            TEXT,                     -- answer from user / agent; null = pending
  status                TEXT NOT NULL,            -- pending | resolved | timeout | invalidated
  requested_at          INTEGER NOT NULL,
  responded_at          INTEGER,
  expires_at            INTEGER,                  -- e.g. OAuth token expiry
  FOREIGN KEY (project_id)         REFERENCES projects(id)                  ON DELETE CASCADE,
  FOREIGN KEY (conversation_id)    REFERENCES conversations(id)             ON DELETE SET NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (run_id)             REFERENCES runs(id)                      ON DELETE SET NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (plugin_snapshot_id) REFERENCES applied_plugin_snapshots(id)  ON DELETE SET NULL
);

CREATE INDEX idx_genui_proj_surface ON genui_surfaces(project_id, surface_id);
CREATE INDEX idx_genui_conv_surface ON genui_surfaces(conversation_id, surface_id);

Lookup rules:

  1. persist='project': the daemon looks up the latest resolved row by (project_id, surface_id); if hit and schema_digest matches and expires_at has not passed, it reuses the value and skips the broadcast.
  2. persist='conversation': same lookup using (conversation_id, surface_id). A new conversation invalidates reuse.
  3. persist='run': only valid within the current run.
  4. Schema drift demotes to invalidated: when the plugin upgrades and the surface schema changes, old rows auto-invalidate and the new run re-asks the user.
  5. User revoke: UI / CLI provide od ui revoke <surface-id> to flip a row to invalidated. Common case: OAuth logout.

This rule directly answers the user's request: "Once the user has authorized or confirmed something inside the same project, do not pester them again across multi-turn / multi-conversation interactions."

10.3.4 Headless / CLI behavior

The ND-JSON stream from od run watch / od run start --follow includes genui_surface_request events. A third-party code agent has three response paths:

# Inspect pending surfaces on a run
od ui list --run <runId> --json

# Read a single surface (kind / schema / prompt) for rendering or auto-fill
od ui show <runId> <surface-id> --json

# Respond from any process; daemon writes to genui_surfaces, the run continues
od ui respond <runId> <surface-id> --value-json '{"audience":"VC"}'
od ui respond <runId> <surface-id> --skip          # triggers onTimeout='skip'
od ui revoke  <projectId> <surface-id>             # cross-conversation revoke

If the CLI caller never responds, the run converges per onTimeout once surface.timeout elapses and never hangs forever. A code agent can also pre-answer for an entire plugin:

od ui prefill <projectId> --plugin <pluginId> --json '{"figma-oauth":"<token>","direction-pick":"editorial"}'

Prefill writes rows in resolved state; when the plugin triggers the surface, the daemon serves the cached value and still emits genui_surface_response { respondedBy: 'cache' } for audit.

10.3.5 Alignment roadmap with the AG-UI protocol

Dimension v1 (OD-native) AG-UI adapter / external compatibility
Wire format OD-native PersistedAgentEvent over SSE / ND-JSON Also emit AG-UI canonical events (agent.message, tool_call, state_update, ui.surface_requested, ui.surface_responded)
Surface kinds Four built-ins + plugin-declared in manifest Keep OD's built-ins as the product source of truth; custom plugin React paths require the genui:custom-component gate and sandbox
Shared state genui_surfaces table + genui_state_synced event Map persisted OD state onto AG-UI's state channel for external consumers
Frontend SDK compatibility OD desktop / web with built-in renderer @open-design/agui-adapter lets CopilotKit / other AG-UI clients consume an OD run unchanged

The adapter is an interoperability surface, not the internal UI source of truth. OD should not add CopilotKit as a required product dependency unless a separate external embed/demo/client explicitly needs it. v1 plugins need no change to be consumable inside the AG-UI ecosystem because the adapter is a projection of OD's own events.

11. Architecture — what changes in the existing repo

11.1 New package: packages/plugin-runtime

Pure TypeScript, no Next/Express/SQLite/browser deps:

  • parsers/manifest.ts — read open-design.jsonPluginManifest (Zod-validated).
  • adapters/agent-skill.ts — read SKILL.md → synthesize a PluginManifest from the od: frontmatter documented in skills-protocol.md.
  • adapters/claude-plugin.ts — read .claude-plugin/plugin.json → synthesize a PluginManifest.
  • merge.ts — merge sidecar + adapters with open-design.json winning; foreign content lands in compat.*.
  • resolve.ts — resolve od.context.* refs against the registry → ResolvedContext.
  • validate.ts — JSON Schema (drives both runtime checks and od plugin doctor).

11.2 New contracts: packages/contracts/src/plugins/

manifest.ts, context.ts, apply.ts, marketplace.ts, installed.ts. Re-exported from packages/contracts/src/index.ts. Pure TypeScript only; honors the boundary rule in the root AGENTS.md.

11.3 Daemon changes

File Change
apps/daemon/src/skills.ts, design-systems.ts, craft.ts Refactor each loader to delegate to a unified apps/daemon/src/plugins/registry.ts. Existing endpoints continue to work for backward compat.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/registry.ts Three-tier scan, conflict resolution, hot-reload watcher.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/installer.ts github / https / local / marketplace install paths; tar/zip extraction; SQLite write.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/apply.ts Implements ApplyResult assembly: resolves refs, returns asset refs / MCP specs / capability requirements / appliedPlugin snapshot; performs no writes. Actual staging and .mcp.json writes happen in project create / run start after the capability gate.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/snapshots.ts §8.2.1 immutable snapshot read/write; status='stale' flips driven by od plugin doctor; provides the replay helper backing POST /api/runs/:runId/replay.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/pipeline.ts Parses od.pipeline (including the until expression evaluator), schedules stages, and drives §10.2 devloop (with OD_MAX_DEVLOOP_ITERATIONS ceiling and break signaling).
New apps/daemon/src/genui/{registry,events,store}.ts §10.3 GenUI: registers surfaces from od.genui.surfaces[], publishes genui_surface_* events, reads/writes the cross-conversation persisted state, and serializes the AG-UI–inspired event union.
New apps/daemon/src/plugins/connector-gate.ts §9 connector capability gate: (a) apply.ts calls into it to resolve od.connectors.required[] against connectorService.listAll(), populating connectorsResolved and deriving the implicit oauth-prompt GenUI surface (§10.3.1) for any not-yet-connected required connector; (b) before apps/daemon/src/tool-tokens.ts issues a connector tool token, this module validates plugin trust × connector:<id> capability (a trusted plugin implicitly carries connector:*; a restricted plugin must list each id explicitly); (c) /api/tools/connectors/execute re-validates on every call, so a token replacement attack never bypasses the gate. This module is the runtime landing point for the P5 path in §9.
apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts composeSystemPrompt() Assembles the base OD designer/discovery prompt, optional design system/craft/skill blocks, snapshot-derived renderPluginBlock(snapshot), and active-stage atom blocks from renderActiveStageBlock(stageId, bodies). Existing layer order remains intentional; plugin-driven fallback mode is still rejected per §11.8 even though the plugin-block renderer now lives in contracts.
New SQLite migration installed_plugins, plugin_marketplaces, applied_plugin_snapshots, run_devloop_iterations, plus applied_plugin_snapshot_id ALTERs on runs / conversations / projects (§11.4).
apps/daemon/src/server.ts Mount new endpoints (§11.5); POST /api/projects and POST /api/runs accept optional pluginId / pluginInputs / appliedPluginSnapshotId; new GET /api/applied-plugins/:snapshotId, POST /api/runs/:runId/replay, GET /api/runs/:runId/devloop-iterations.
apps/daemon/src/cli.ts New plugin, marketplace, project, run, and files subcommand routers (Phase 1 ships plugin verbs plus the headless MVP project/run/files loop; §16).

11.4 SQLite migrations (new tables only)

CREATE TABLE installed_plugins (
  id                   TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  title                TEXT NOT NULL,
  version              TEXT NOT NULL,
  source_kind          TEXT NOT NULL,    -- bundled | user | project | marketplace | github | url | local
  source               TEXT NOT NULL,
  pinned_ref           TEXT,
  source_digest        TEXT,
  trust                TEXT NOT NULL,    -- trusted | restricted
  capabilities_granted TEXT NOT NULL,    -- JSON array
  manifest_json        TEXT NOT NULL,    -- cached open-design.json (or synthesized)
  fs_path              TEXT NOT NULL,
  installed_at         INTEGER NOT NULL,
  updated_at           INTEGER NOT NULL
);

CREATE TABLE plugin_marketplaces (
  id            TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  url           TEXT NOT NULL,
  trust         TEXT NOT NULL,           -- official | trusted | untrusted
  manifest_json TEXT NOT NULL,
  added_at      INTEGER NOT NULL,
  refreshed_at  INTEGER NOT NULL
);

-- §8.2.1: immutable apply-time snapshot; runs/artifacts back-reference it via snapshot_id
CREATE TABLE applied_plugin_snapshots (
  id                      TEXT PRIMARY KEY,            -- snapshot_id
  project_id              TEXT NOT NULL,
  conversation_id         TEXT,
  run_id                  TEXT,                        -- nullable: apply followed by user cancel = no run yet
  plugin_id               TEXT NOT NULL,
  plugin_version          TEXT NOT NULL,
  manifest_source_digest  TEXT NOT NULL,               -- see §8.2.1
  source_marketplace_id   TEXT,
  pinned_ref              TEXT,
  task_kind               TEXT NOT NULL,               -- §1: new-generation | code-migration | figma-migration | tune-collab
  inputs_json             TEXT NOT NULL,
  resolved_context_json   TEXT NOT NULL,
  pipeline_json           TEXT,                        -- materialized PluginPipeline; if absent, the reference pipeline used
  capabilities_granted    TEXT NOT NULL,               -- JSON array
  assets_staged_json      TEXT NOT NULL,               -- assets actually staged into cwd
  connectors_required_json TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '[]', -- §5 od.connectors.required + optional, frozen as PluginConnectorRef[]
  connectors_resolved_json TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '[]', -- PluginConnectorBinding[] (id, accountLabel, status) at apply time
  mcp_servers_json        TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '[]',  -- MCP server set active at apply time, frozen as McpServerSpec[]
  status                  TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT 'fresh', -- fresh | stale (set by `od plugin doctor` after upgrade)
  applied_at              INTEGER NOT NULL,
  expires_at              INTEGER,                       -- NULL when referenced by any run / conversation / project (pinned forever); otherwise applied_at + OD_SNAPSHOT_UNREFERENCED_TTL_DAYS at insert time. GC worker (Phase 5) deletes rows where expires_at <= now()
  FOREIGN KEY (project_id)      REFERENCES projects(id)      ON DELETE CASCADE,
  FOREIGN KEY (conversation_id) REFERENCES conversations(id) ON DELETE SET NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (run_id)          REFERENCES runs(id)          ON DELETE SET NULL
);

CREATE INDEX idx_snapshots_project ON applied_plugin_snapshots(project_id);
CREATE INDEX idx_snapshots_run     ON applied_plugin_snapshots(run_id);
CREATE INDEX idx_snapshots_plugin  ON applied_plugin_snapshots(plugin_id, plugin_version);

-- Optional pointers from runs / conversations / projects to the snapshot in force.
-- OD primary keys unchanged; backwards compatible.
ALTER TABLE runs          ADD COLUMN applied_plugin_snapshot_id TEXT REFERENCES applied_plugin_snapshots(id);
ALTER TABLE conversations ADD COLUMN applied_plugin_snapshot_id TEXT REFERENCES applied_plugin_snapshots(id);
ALTER TABLE projects      ADD COLUMN applied_plugin_snapshot_id TEXT REFERENCES applied_plugin_snapshots(id);

-- §10.2 devloop audit and future per-iteration billing
CREATE TABLE run_devloop_iterations (
  id                      TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  run_id                  TEXT NOT NULL,
  stage_id                TEXT NOT NULL,
  iteration               INTEGER NOT NULL,
  artifact_diff_summary   TEXT,
  critique_summary        TEXT,
  tokens_used             INTEGER,
  ended_at                INTEGER NOT NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (run_id) REFERENCES runs(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
);

-- §10.3 GenUI surface persisted state; reused at run / conversation / project tier
CREATE TABLE genui_surfaces (
  id                    TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  project_id            TEXT NOT NULL,
  conversation_id       TEXT,
  run_id                TEXT,
  plugin_snapshot_id    TEXT NOT NULL,
  surface_id            TEXT NOT NULL,            -- plugin-declared id
  kind                  TEXT NOT NULL,            -- form | choice | confirmation | oauth-prompt
  persist               TEXT NOT NULL,            -- run | conversation | project
  schema_digest         TEXT,
  value_json            TEXT,
  status                TEXT NOT NULL,            -- pending | resolved | timeout | invalidated
  responded_by          TEXT,                     -- user | agent | auto | cache
  requested_at          INTEGER NOT NULL,
  responded_at          INTEGER,
  expires_at            INTEGER,
  FOREIGN KEY (project_id)         REFERENCES projects(id)                  ON DELETE CASCADE,
  FOREIGN KEY (conversation_id)    REFERENCES conversations(id)             ON DELETE SET NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (run_id)             REFERENCES runs(id)                      ON DELETE SET NULL,
  FOREIGN KEY (plugin_snapshot_id) REFERENCES applied_plugin_snapshots(id)  ON DELETE SET NULL
);

CREATE INDEX idx_genui_proj_surface ON genui_surfaces(project_id, surface_id);
CREATE INDEX idx_genui_conv_surface ON genui_surfaces(conversation_id, surface_id);
CREATE INDEX idx_genui_run          ON genui_surfaces(run_id);

Migrations are additive only; existing projects / runs / conversations column semantics are untouched. The daemon writes per the schema at install / apply / run start / stage end. od plugin doctor flips affected snapshots to status='stale' after a plugin upgrade by comparing manifest_source_digest, but never deletes or rewrites a snapshot row — historical reproducibility wins over storage cost.

11.5 New HTTP endpoints

Method Path Purpose
GET /api/plugins list installed plugins (filters: kind, scenario, mode, trust)
GET /api/plugins/:id detail (manifest, preview URLs, capability state)
GET /api/plugins/:id/preview serve preview HTML / poster / video
GET /api/plugins/:id/example/:name serve example output
POST /api/plugins/install body { source }; streaming progress over SSE
POST /api/plugins/:id/uninstall remove + db cleanup
POST /api/plugins/:id/trust grant capabilities
POST /api/plugins/:id/apply request { projectId? }, returns ApplyResult
GET /api/marketplaces configured marketplaces
POST /api/marketplaces add a marketplace
POST /api/marketplaces/:id/trust trust / untrust marketplace (body trust is trusted or untrusted)
GET /api/marketplaces/:id/plugins catalog (paginated)
GET /api/atoms list first-party atoms

POST /api/projects and POST /api/runs (today at server.ts:2362 / 6009) accept additional optional pluginId, pluginInputs, and appliedPluginSnapshotId (any combination is accepted; the server prefers appliedPluginSnapshotId, falling back to fresh resolution). New endpoints:

Method Path Purpose
GET /api/applied-plugins/:snapshotId read an immutable snapshot; used for audit, replay, od plugin export
POST /api/runs/:runId/replay rerun the long-task starting from the run's snapshot id
GET /api/runs/:runId/devloop-iterations read §10.2 devloop iteration history
GET /api/runs/:runId/genui list pending / resolved §10.3 surfaces for the run
GET /api/projects/:projectId/genui list project-tier surfaces (reused across conversations)
POST /api/runs/:runId/genui/:surfaceId/respond write a surface answer; emits genui_surface_response
POST /api/projects/:projectId/genui/:surfaceId/revoke flip a row to invalidated (OAuth logout etc.)
POST /api/projects/:projectId/genui/prefill bulk pre-answer surfaces; body { pluginId, values }

Transport equivalence (rule of thumb). Every endpoint above is also exposed as a CLI subcommand and, where it fits MCP semantics, as an MCP tool. Code agents should use the CLI; only the desktop web app and od … itself use HTTP directly. See §12 for the full CLI surface.

11.5.1 ArtifactManifest extension: plugin provenance

To let "migration / secondary tuning / collaboration / deployment" continue around the same artifact, the existing ArtifactManifest in packages/contracts/src/api/registry.ts keeps every existing field (sourceSkillId, etc.) and adds the optional provenance fields below:

export interface ArtifactManifest {
  // ... existing fields kept verbatim ...

  /** §8.2.1 immutable snapshot; reading this row alone fully reconstructs the plugin state that produced this artifact */
  sourcePluginSnapshotId?: string;

  /** Redundant fields for join-free filtering and marketplace-side aggregation */
  sourcePluginId?: string;
  sourcePluginVersion?: string;
  sourceTaskKind?: 'new-generation' | 'code-migration' | 'figma-migration' | 'tune-collab';
  sourceRunId?: string;
  sourceProjectId?: string;

  /** Stable output taxonomy used by preview, export, deploy, tuning, and handoff flows.
   *  These fields are optional in v1 but must be preserved by readers and writers. */
  artifactKind?:
    | 'html-prototype'
    | 'deck'
    | 'interactive-video'
    | 'design-system'
    | 'code-diff'
    | 'production-app'
    | 'asset-pack';
  renderKind?: 'html' | 'jsx' | 'pptx' | 'markdown' | 'video' | 'image' | 'diff' | 'repo';
  handoffKind?: 'design-only' | 'implementation-plan' | 'patch' | 'deployable-app';

  /** Which downstream collaboration surfaces this artifact has been pushed to,
   *  serving §1's "distribution to cli / other code agents / cloud / desktop" claim */
  exportTargets?: Array<{
    surface: 'cli' | 'desktop' | 'web' | 'docker' | 'github' | 'figma' | 'code-agent';
    target: string;
    exportedAt: number;
  }>;

  /** Deployment targets (for hosted / cloud scenarios) */
  deployTargets?: Array<{
    provider: 'aws' | 'gcp' | 'azure' | 'aliyun' | 'tencent' | 'huawei' | 'self-hosted';
    location: string;
    deployedAt: number;
  }>;
}

Write rules:

  • On run completion, the daemon writes the current appliedPluginSnapshotId plus redundant fields into every newly produced artifact manifest.
  • When a plugin declares output hints, the daemon writes artifactKind, renderKind, and handoffKind; otherwise it infers the safest value from od.mode, od.preview.type, and the emitted files. Unknown readers must preserve these fields even when they do not use them yet.
  • Every od plugin export / od files upload --to <target> / od deploy ... appends an exportTargets / deployTargets row but never mutates sourcePluginSnapshotId.
  • Tuning-class artifacts (tune-collab) record both sourcePluginSnapshotId (the current plugin) and parentArtifactId (the previous version being tuned), forming a back-pointer chain.

This contract makes "the same artifact flows across collaboration surfaces" a first-class operation: a CLI viewer of an artifact can always look up the source plugin / inputs / design system; a cloud collaborator can always reproduce a local result; subsequent code-migration / Figma-migration outputs are linked to their predecessors via parentArtifactId.

11.6 Web changes

The web surface gets two coexisting surfaces backed by the same primitives:

  • Deep / browsing surface at /marketplace and /marketplace/:id — for discovery, install, capability review.
  • Shallow / inline surface below the input box on Home (NewProjectPanel) and inside every project's chat composer (ChatComposer) — the primary daily-driver flow described in §8. User stares at an input, sees plugin cards under it, clicks one, fills blanks, sends.

Both surfaces share ContextChipStrip, PluginInputsForm, InlinePluginsRail (used as a strip on Home and a slim row in ChatComposer), and the applyPlugin(pluginId, projectId?) state helper.

Current discovery-surface status: the shipped web app has two related but not yet unified discovery projections. The Home hero's chip rail (Prototype, Live artifact, Slide deck, Image, Video, etc.) is a curated high-frequency scenario list, currently owned as product UI data. The Community / Plugins home filters are more data-driven: they derive counts and facets from plugin manifest metadata such as mode, task kind, scenario, tags, and pipeline atoms, then layer a curated category taxonomy over the catalog. The target extension model is one scenario registry / manifest projection that feeds Home chips, plugin filters, composer tools, and @search uniformly. Until that lands, treat the Home rail as a transitional product shortcut, not as the plugin extension primitive.

File Change
apps/web/src/router.ts Extend Route union with marketplace and marketplace-detail.
New apps/web/src/components/MarketplaceView.tsx Grid of plugin cards (reuses ExamplesTab card style). The deep browsing surface.
New apps/web/src/components/PluginDetailView.tsx Preview, use-case query, context items, sample outputs, capabilities, install/use button.
New apps/web/src/components/InlinePluginsRail.tsx The plugins shown directly under the input box on Home and inside ChatComposer. Filterable, ranked by recency / project relevance / featured. Click a card → calls applyPlugin() in place. Same component is used in two layouts: Home renders it as a wide grid; ChatComposer renders it as a slim horizontal strip with overflow scroll.
New apps/web/src/components/ContextChipStrip.tsx Chip strip rendered above the brief input on both NewProjectPanel and ChatComposer. Each chip is a ContextItem; click opens a popover; X removes.
New apps/web/src/components/PluginInputsForm.tsx Renders od.inputs as inline form fields between the brief input and Send. Required fields gate Send. As inputs change, {{var}} placeholders in useCase.query and chip labels re-render live.
apps/web/src/components/NewProjectPanel.tsx Add contextItems + pluginInputs + appliedPluginId state. Layout becomes: name input on top, ContextChipStrip above it, PluginInputsForm between input and Send (when a plugin is applied), and InlinePluginsRail below the Send button as the discovery surface. Send creates the project and the first run (existing flow), passing pluginId and inputs through.
apps/web/src/components/ChatComposer.tsx Same composer modifications as NewProjectPanel: chip strip above, inputs form between input and Send, plugins rail below. Apply calls POST /api/plugins/:id/apply with the current projectId; Send calls POST /api/runs with pluginId so the run uses the plugin's prompt context. Filters in the rail are seeded from the project's kind / scenario.
apps/web/src/components/ExamplesTab.tsx Stays. Phase 3 folds it into Marketplace as a "Local skills" tab. The "Use this prompt" button there is rerouted through applyPlugin() so behavior matches the inline rail.
apps/web/src/state/projects.ts Add applyPlugin(pluginId, projectId?) helper hitting POST /api/plugins/:id/apply. Add setPluginInputs(), clearAppliedPlugin().
New apps/web/src/components/GenUISurfaceRenderer.tsx Default React renderer for the four §10.3 built-in surface kinds (form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt). Subscribes to genui_surface_request and renders an inline card or modal; calls POST /api/runs/:runId/genui/:surfaceId/respond.
New apps/web/src/components/GenUIInbox.tsx Project-level panel that lists every cross-conversation persisted surface for the project (figma OAuth, brand confirmations, etc.) with revoke entry points.
apps/web/src/components/ProjectView.tsx Mount GenUISurfaceRenderer inside the chat stream; mount GenUIInbox inside a side drawer.

11.7 Headless and UI: a clean decoupling

OD runs in three operating modes that share one daemon, one CLI, and one plugin runtime. The differences are purely presentational. This is the same shape Cursor uses: cursor-agent (CLI) is sufficient on its own; the IDE is sugar.

Mode What runs When to use Entry
Headless Daemon process only — no web bundle, no electron CI, servers, containers, Claude-Code-driven flows od daemon start --headless (new flag, Phase 2)
Web Daemon + local web UI (no electron) Browser-only setups, Linux without GUI dependencies od daemon start --serve-web (new, Phase 2)
Desktop Daemon + web bundle + electron shell Full product experience (today's default) od (current default, unchanged)

The split is enforced by a single rule:

Decoupling rule. Every UI feature is implementable as a CLI subcommand or a streaming event first. The desktop UI is allowed to render those primitives more richly; it is not allowed to introduce capabilities that have no CLI equivalent. Reviewers reject any PR that adds UI-only behavior (matches §12.6).

In practice this means:

  • Marketplace browsing — UI: grid + filters + previews. CLI: od plugin list/info, od marketplace search, od plugin info <id> --json returns the same manifest the UI renders.
  • Plugin apply — UI: click card, chips and inputs hydrate in place. CLI: od plugin apply <id> --json returns the identical ApplyResult.
  • Run streaming — UI: chat bubbles, todo list, progress chrome. CLI: od run start --follow emits ND-JSON events from the same PersistedAgentEvent discriminated union the UI consumes.
  • Direction picker / question form — UI: rendered as inline cards. CLI: emitted as structured events on stdout; agent or scripted wrapper picks an option by writing to stdin or via od run respond <runId> --json '{...}'.
  • Live artifact preview — UI: hot-reloading iframe. CLI: od files watch <projectId> --path <relpath> streams change events; user opens the file with their own tool of choice.
  • Critique theater — UI: 5-panel side-by-side. CLI: emitted as a structured critique event the agent or wrapper renders however it likes.

What this unlocks:

  • A user with only Claude Code (or any code agent) plus npm i -g @open-design/cli plus a running headless daemon can do the entire user journey: install plugin → create project → run → consume artifacts. No OD desktop required.
  • The OD desktop UI installs the same daemon and the same CLI; it just adds a window. Users who later install the desktop find the same projects, plugins, and history that the headless flow produced — there is no "headless project format" vs. "desktop project format". Same .od/projects/<id>/, same SQLite db.
  • CI is a first-class citizen: a GitHub Action can npm i -g @open-design/cli && od daemon start --headless && od plugin install … && od run start --project … --follow. No display, no electron, no per-step UI scripting.
  • External products can embed OD by spawning a headless daemon and shelling out — od is the public surface, internals are free to evolve.

The cost: a small handful of od daemon flags and one new lifecycle subcommand (od daemon start/stop/status with --headless / --serve-web). Implementation lands in Phase 2 alongside the CLI parity slice.

11.8 Prompt composition: v1 plugin runs go through the daemon, no fork

OD already has two composeSystemPrompt() implementations:

If the ## Active plugin block is added only to the daemon composer, web API-fallback runs would silently produce plugin-context-less prompts; if it is added to both, drift is almost guaranteed. The spec locks the rule:

  1. v1: plugin-driven runs are supported only in daemon-orchestrated mode (desktop / web both go through the daemon over HTTP; headless / Docker talk to the daemon directly). Web API-fallback (browser-to-provider, daemon out of the path) does not support pluginId in v1: when a fallback-mode client tries to create a run with pluginId, the web sidecar detects the missing daemon hop and returns 409 plugin-requires-daemon; the UI prompts the user to start the daemon or switch to desktop / headless. Phase 2A validation explicitly tests this.
  2. Phase 2A lifts the plugin block renderer into contracts. The pure function renderPluginBlock(snapshot: AppliedPluginSnapshot): string lives in packages/contracts/src/prompts/plugin-block.ts and is imported by both apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts and packages/contracts/src/prompts/system.ts. The daemon composer calls it; the contracts composer holds the import but does not call it under the v1 fallback rejection rule (1). This eliminates the byte-equality drift class entirely — there is one definition of the plugin block, not two — at the cost of half a day of refactor, while preserving the v1 fallback rejection in (1).
  3. Phase 4 turns on fallback support for plugins. With the renderer already in contracts, enabling fallback-mode plugin runs is a one-line wiring change inside the contracts composer plus removal of the 409 in the web sidecar. No prompt-shape work; no new CI guards. (Originally the lift was scheduled for Phase 4 itself, with a Phase 1–4 byte-equality CI fixture between the two composers; the plan in docs/plans/plugins-implementation.md PB1 pulled the lift into Phase 2A so the fixture is never needed.)

The consequence: of the three consumption modes in §14.2 (skill-only / headless OD / full OD), only the latter two ever carry plugin context in v1 — consistent with §1, where a plugin is a wrapper around a long-running task that needs the daemon (or its headless equivalent) to assemble. Phase 4 closes that gap if and when fallback-mode plugin support is wanted.

This also answers the "no plugin selected" path: a run without an applied plugin still receives the base OD prompt stack (DISCOVERY_AND_PHILOSOPHY, the official designer instructions, project metadata, active design system/craft when present, and any default scenario routing chosen by the entry point). Plugin context is additive. Selecting a plugin adds the snapshot-derived ## Active plugin, ## Plugin inputs, and active-stage atom blocks; it does not turn a non-design agent into a design agent from scratch.

12. CLI surface

The CLI (od …) is the canonical agent-facing API for Open Design. Plugin verbs are one slice of it; the rest of the CLI wraps the daemon's core capabilities — projects, conversations, runs, file operations, design library introspection, daemon control — so that any code agent can drive OD end-to-end through shell calls. This is the "natural-language project + task creation through CLI" path: a code agent reads a user's request, then issues a sequence of od … calls instead of speaking HTTP.

12.1 Three transports of one logical API

Transport Use case Implementation
HTTP (/api/*) Desktop web app, internal tooling, the CLI's own use apps/daemon/src/server.ts
CLI (od …) Code agents shelling out, scripts, CI apps/daemon/src/cli.ts
MCP stdio MCP-aware agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) od mcp and od mcp live-artifacts (existing)

When a new capability ships, the CLI subcommand is the primary contract. The HTTP route exists to back the CLI; the MCP server exposes a curated subset of CLI subcommands as tools. Versioning: subcommand names, argument names, and --json schemas are governed by packages/contracts and tested in CI; breaking changes follow a major-version bump of the od bin.

12.2 Command groups

Existing commands (apps/daemon/src/cli.ts) stay; new groups added below them.

Project lifecycle (new)

od project create [--name "<title>"] [--skill <id>] [--design-system <id>]
                  [--plugin <id>] [--input k=v ...] [--brief "<text>"]
                  [--metadata-json <path|->] [--json]
od project list   [--json]
od project info   <id> [--json]
od project delete <id>
od project import <path> [--name "<title>"] [--json]   # wraps existing /api/import/folder
od project open   <id>                                 # opens browser at /projects/<id>

Result of od project create --json:

{ "projectId": "p_abc", "conversationId": "c_xyz", "url": "http://127.0.0.1:17456/projects/p_abc" }

Conversation lifecycle (new)

od conversation list <projectId> [--json]
od conversation new  <projectId> [--name "<title>"] [--json]
od conversation info <conversationId> [--json]

Run / task lifecycle (new)

od run start --project <projectId> [--conversation <conversationId>]
             [--message "<text>"] [--plugin <pluginId>] [--input k=v ...]
             [--agent claude|codex|gemini] [--model <id>] [--reasoning <level>]
             [--attachments <relpath,...>] [--follow] [--json]

od run watch  <runId>                # ND-JSON SSE-equivalent events on stdout
od run cancel <runId>
od run list   [--project <id>] [--status running|done|failed] [--json]
od run logs   <runId>                # historical tail; --since for incremental

--follow on run start is shorthand for start && watch. Both stream the same event schema, defined in packages/contracts/src/api/chat.ts (the existing PersistedAgentEvent discriminated union, exposed as one event per line).

File system operations on a project (new)

The daemon already owns project filesystems under .od/projects/<id>/ (or metadata.baseDir for imported folders). These commands are project-scoped — agents do not need to know where the project lives on disk.

od files list   <projectId> [--path <subdir>] [--json]
od files read   <projectId> <relpath>                   # writes to stdout
od files write  <projectId> <relpath> [< stdin]         # reads from stdin
od files upload <projectId> <localpath> [--as <relpath>]
od files delete <projectId> <relpath>
od files diff   <projectId> <relpath>                   # vs. last committed version (when imported from git)

A code agent typically uses od files read / od files write instead of native file ops when targeting OD-managed projects, because the daemon owns artifact bookkeeping (ArtifactManifest.sourceSkillId, etc. in packages/contracts/src/api/registry.ts).

Plugin verbs

od plugin install   <source>                            # github: | https://… | ./folder | <name from marketplace>
od plugin uninstall <id>
od plugin list      [--kind skill|scenario|atom|bundle] [--trust trusted|restricted] [--json]
od plugin info      <id> [--json]
od plugin update    [<id>]
od plugin trust     <id> [--caps fs:write,mcp,bash,hooks]   # permanent grant; persisted on installed_plugins
od plugin apply     <id> --project <projectId> [--input k=v ...] [--grant-caps fs:read,mcp ...] [--json]
                                                            # returns ApplyResult; pure (no run)
                                                            # --grant-caps: scoped to this apply's snapshot only
od plugin run       <id> --project <projectId> [--input k=v ...] [--grant-caps ...] [--follow] [--json]
                                                            # shorthand: apply + run start --follow
od plugin replay    <runId> [--follow] [--json]             # rerun the long-task using the run's applied_plugin_snapshot
od plugin export    <projectId> --as od|claude-plugin|agent-skill --out <dir>
od plugin doctor    <id>
od plugin scaffold

Generative UI verbs (§10.3)

od ui list      [--run <runId> | --project <projectId>] [--status pending|resolved|timeout|invalidated] [--json]
od ui show      <runId> <surface-id> [--json]                 # surface kind / schema / prompt
od ui respond   <runId> <surface-id> --value-json '{...}'     # write answer, unblock the run
od ui respond   <runId> <surface-id> --skip                   # trigger onTimeout='skip'
od ui revoke    <projectId> <surface-id>                      # invalidate persisted answer (e.g. OAuth logout)
od ui prefill   <projectId> --plugin <pluginId> --json '{ "<surface-id>": <value>, ... }'
                                                              # bulk pre-answer, used before the run starts

Marketplace verbs

od marketplace add     <url> [--trust]
od marketplace remove  <id>
od marketplace trust   <id>
od marketplace untrust <id>
od marketplace list    [--json]
od marketplace refresh [<id>]
od marketplace search  "<query>" [--tag <tag>] [--json]   # search across configured catalogs

Design library introspection (new)

od skills list             [--json] [--scenario <s>] [--mode <m>]
od skills show             <id> [--json]
od design-systems list     [--json]
od design-systems show     <id> [--json]
od craft list              [--json]
od atoms list              [--json]                       # first-party atoms (§10)

Daemon control (new)

od daemon start  [--headless] [--serve-web] [--port <n>] [--host <h>]
                                                           # explicit lifecycle (§11.7);
                                                           # default `od` (no args) keeps current behavior
od daemon stop   [--daemon-url <url>]
od daemon status [--json]                                   # alias of `od status`
od status        [--json]                                   # daemon up? port? installed plugins count
od doctor                                                   # diagnostics: skills/DS/craft/plugins, providers, MCP
od version       [--json]
od config get|set|list|unset  [--key ...] [--value ...]     # backed by media-config.json + db

od daemon start --headless is the entry for the headless mode in §11.7 (no web bundle, no electron). od daemon start --serve-web adds the local web UI without electron. Both keep using the existing tools-dev port conventions (OD_PORT, OD_WEB_PORT).

Existing agent-callable tools (unchanged)

od research search ...
od media generate  ...
od tools live-artifacts ...
od tools connectors  ...
od mcp                       # stdio MCP server
od mcp live-artifacts        # specialized MCP server

12.3 Output conventions

  • --json on every command emits structured output. Default is human-readable.
  • Streaming commands (run watch, run start --follow, plugin install) emit ND-JSON: one JSON object per line, terminated by \n. Each event matches the existing PersistedAgentEvent schema or a small command-specific superset (e.g. install progress lines).
  • Exit codes:
    • 0 — success.
    • 1 — generic failure (unstructured stderr).
    • 2 — bad usage / argument validation.
    • 64–79 — known agent-recoverable errors with structured stderr (see §12.4).
    • >=80 — daemon errors (HTTP 5xx, etc.).

12.4 Recoverable error codes (for agents)

Exit Meaning Recovery hint Structured stderr data (excerpt)
64 Daemon not running od status, then start daemon { host, port }
65 Plugin not found / not installed od plugin list then od plugin install <source> { pluginId, candidateSources[] }
66 Plugin restricted, capability required od plugin trust <id> --caps … or retry with --grant-caps … { pluginId, pluginVersion, required[], granted[], remediation[] }
67 Required input missing on apply re-run with --input k=v for each missing field { pluginId, missing[], schema }
68 Project not found od project list { projectId }
69 Run not found / already terminal od run list --project <id> { runId, status }
70 Provider not configured od config set ... for the provider key { provider, requiredKeys[] }
71 Plugin requires daemon mode start daemon or switch to desktop / headless { pluginId, mode: 'api-fallback' } (§11.8)
72 Applied plugin snapshot stale od plugin replay <runId> or od plugin upgrade <id> then re-apply { snapshotId, pluginId, currentVersion, snapshotVersion }
73 GenUI surface awaiting response inspect via od ui show <runId> <surface-id> then answer with od ui respond, or od ui prefill before the run { runId, surfaceId, kind, schema, prompt, persist, timeoutAt } (§10.3)

When --json is set, structured error output is { "error": { "code": "<short-code>", "message": "<human>", "data": { ... } } } on stderr. The exit codes above remain stable; the human prose may evolve. The exit-66 data shape matches §9.1's capability gate JSON; an agent reading 66 can retry with --grant-caps or surface remediation text upstream.

12.5 Authoring patterns for code agents

A code agent driving Open Design through the CLI typically does:

# 1. (Optional) Inspect what's available.
od skills list --json
od plugin list --json

# 2. Create a project bound to a skill or design system.
PID=$(od project create --skill blog-post --design-system linear-clone --json | jq -r .projectId)

# 3. Apply a plugin to preview the brief and context (pure; no run yet).
od plugin apply make-a-deck --project "$PID" --input topic="agentic design" --input audience=VC --json

# 4. Start the run, follow events live (ND-JSON on stdout).
od run start --project "$PID" --plugin make-a-deck \
             --input topic="agentic design" --input audience=VC \
             --message "Make it concise; investor-ready." --follow \
  | jq -r 'select(.kind == "message_chunk") | .text' \
  | tee run.log

# 5. Consume produced artifacts.
od files list "$PID" --json
od files read "$PID" index.html > out.html

This sequence works identically locally, in CI, in a Docker sidecar, or driven from inside another agent loop. No HTTP, no port discovery, no auth tokens — the CLI hides all of that behind the stable subcommand contract.

12.6 What this means for the existing CLI

Every group above is additive to apps/daemon/src/cli.ts. The current default od (start daemon + open web UI) remains unchanged. Existing od media, od research, od tools, od mcp commands keep their exact contracts. The new groups are wrappers around endpoints that already exist in apps/daemon/src/server.ts for the ones the desktop UI uses today (project create/list, run start/watch, file upload/list), plus the new endpoints from §11.5 for plugins/marketplace/atoms.

Implementation rule: if a code agent can do something through the desktop UI, it MUST be doable through od … with the same arguments and equivalent output. No silent UI-only capabilities.

13. Public web surface (open-design.ai/marketplace)

The product site already lives at open-design.ai. The public marketplace ships as a path on that same site — open-design.ai/marketplace (canonical) with open-design.ai/plugins as an alias — not as a separate domain. It is a static-rendered catalog rendered from the official open-design-marketplace.json index, with plugin detail pages backed by the same open-design.json files inside each listed repo. Visually it mirrors what skills.sh does for skills, but its detail pages render OD-specific previews (the od.preview.entry HTML, sample outputs, the use-case query, the chip preview).

The site shares one source of truth with the in-app marketplace:

  • Same JSON Schemas (https://open-design.ai/schemas/plugin.v1.json, https://open-design.ai/schemas/marketplace.v1.json).
  • Same federated listing format (open-design-marketplace.json).
  • Same plugin manifests (open-design.json inside each repo).

Two consumption surfaces, one substrate:

Surface Audience Primary CTA
In-app marketplace (/marketplace, §11.6) Logged-in OD users "Use this plugin" → applies in place
Public marketplace (open-design.ai/marketplace) Anonymous visitors, SEO, share Deep-link od://plugins/<id>?apply=1 (auto-installs and applies in the desktop app), plus "Copy install command"

Deep-link contract (Phase 4 deliverable, scoped here so the schema supports it):

  • od://plugins/<id> — open the plugin detail in the in-app marketplace.
  • od://plugins/<id>?apply=1[&input.k=v...] — install if missing, then apply with the supplied inputs.
  • od://marketplace/add?url=<urlencoded> — register a new federated catalog.

The desktop app registers the od:// URL scheme; clicking a button on open-design.ai/marketplace either launches the desktop or, if it is not installed, falls back to a "How to install Open Design" flow.

Status: out of scope for the v1 implementation, but the JSON shapes and the URL scheme are locked here so the in-app marketplace and the public site can be developed independently without divergence.

14. Publishing and catalog distribution

A single GitHub repo per plugin, simultaneously usable across every catalog the user mentioned:

Catalog What it needs What we ship in the repo
anthropics/skills SKILL.md with name/description frontmatter SKILL.md (canonical anchor)
anthropics/claude-code/plugins .claude-plugin/plugin.json + standard structure .claude-plugin/plugin.json (optional)
VoltAgent/awesome-agent-skills PR adds a row pointing at the repo URL repo URL — automation in §14.1
openclaw/clawhub submission via clawhub web app or PR repo URL
skills.sh indexed automatically once npx skills add owner/repo is observed repo URL
open-design-marketplace.json entry referencing github:owner/repo open-design.json enriches the listing

14.1 Author tooling

  • od plugin scaffold — writes a starter folder containing both SKILL.md (industry-standard, with od: frontmatter for backward compat) and open-design.json (OD enrichment with compat.agentSkills pointing at the SKILL.md).
  • od plugin doctor — runs the JSON Schema, the SKILL.md frontmatter parser, and a "does this look listable on awesome-agent-skills / clawhub / skills.sh?" lint that checks for README presence, license file, and frontmatter completeness.
  • od plugin publish --to <catalog> (Phase 4) — opens a browser to the catalog's PR template with a pre-filled row.

14.2 Cross-agent consumption

Any code agent that consumes a folder via SKILL.md works without OD installed. The plugin is one repo with three valid consumption modes:

  1. Skill-only consumption (no OD). A Cursor user runs npx skills add open-design/make-a-deck. Cursor reads SKILL.md and runs the workflow. No OD CLI, no OD daemon. The plugin's marketplace polish (open-design.json) is ignored — Cursor sees a vanilla skill.
  2. Headless OD (CLI + code agent, no OD UI). A power user keeps using their preferred code agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc. — but adds OD as a side service to gain plugin context resolution, project bookkeeping, design library injection, and artifact tracking. No browser, no electron. See §14.3 below for the concrete pipeline.
  3. Full OD (CLI + code agent + OD UI). Same as (2) plus the desktop or web UI for live preview, marketplace browsing, chat/canvas split-view, etc.

The plugin author writes the SKILL.md once. All three modes consume it.

14.3 Concrete headless pipeline (Claude Code + od CLI, no OD UI)

This mirrors what cursor-agent + scripts can do for Cursor — code agent does the thinking, OD CLI provides the project / plugin / artifact substrate.

# One-time setup: install the OD CLI as an npm global (publishable as @open-design/cli).
npm install -g @open-design/cli

# Start the daemon in headless mode — no web bundle, no electron, no browser.
od daemon start --headless --port 17456

# Install the OD plugin you want to drive (or an upstream agent skill — both work).
od plugin install github:open-design/plugins/make-a-deck

# Create a project bound to the plugin. Inputs are templated into the brief.
PID=$(od project create \
        --plugin make-a-deck \
        --input topic="agentic design" \
        --input audience=VC \
        --json | jq -r .projectId)

# Drive the run with Claude Code (or any code agent). Two equivalent paths:

# Path A — let `od` orchestrate Claude Code as the run's agent:
od run start --project "$PID" --plugin make-a-deck \
             --agent claude --follow

# Path B — drive Claude Code directly inside the project cwd; OD only provides
# context resolution and artifact bookkeeping. Useful when the user's existing
# code-agent setup is opinionated.
CWD=$(od project info "$PID" --json | jq -r .cwd)
cd "$CWD"
# OD has already staged the merged SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft / atoms into
# .od-skills/ inside the cwd, exactly as the desktop run would.
claude code "Read .od-skills/ and produce the deliverables the active plugin describes."

# Consume the produced artifacts.
od files list "$PID" --json
od files read "$PID" slides.html > slides.html
open slides.html      # or however the user wants to view the file

What this proves:

  • The full marketplace -> plugin -> apply -> run -> artifact pipeline is reachable from a terminal in <10 lines.
  • The OD daemon does not need to render anything; it acts as a project + plugin + artifact server.
  • The same project, when later opened in the OD desktop UI, shows the full conversation history, files, and artifacts produced by the headless run — because there is exactly one storage layer (§4.6 in spec.md, .od/projects/<id>/ + SQLite).

14.4 Analogy: Cursor vs cursor-agent, OD desktop vs od CLI

The mental model:

Layer Cursor Open Design
Headless agent CLI cursor-agent (drives the agent loop) od run start --agent claude --follow + od plugin run
Local services / db Cursor's background indexing / state OD daemon, SQLite, .od/projects/<id>/
GUI productivity layer Cursor IDE OD desktop / web UI (apps/web + apps/desktop)
Plugin / skill format .cursor/rules/, MCP servers SKILL.md + open-design.json + atoms

Both products are decoupled the same way: the terminal flow is sufficient; the IDE/desktop is the productivity multiplier. Plugin authors never have to choose — they write one SKILL.md plus optional sidecar, and reach all three consumption modes.

15. Deployment and portability — Docker, any cloud

OD ships as a single multi-arch Docker image so the full plugin/marketplace system can be brought up with one command and run unchanged on every major cloud. This is the substrate for the ecosystem and commercial story: a partner self-hosts inside their VPC; an enterprise runs a private marketplace; a CI job spins up a per-job OD daemon. The image is the headless mode of §11.7 packaged for ops, optionally serving the web UI from §11.6 when --serve-web is set.

15.1 Image shape

  • Tag: ghcr.io/open-design/od:<version> plus moving :latest and :edge.
  • Architectures: linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 (single manifest list).
  • Contents:
    • Node 24 runtime + the daemon dist/ bundle.
    • The od CLI on PATH.
    • Web UI bundle (apps/web build) so the same image serves both API and UI.
    • Bundled code-agent CLIs that OD supports as agent backends: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI. Selectable per run; default is OD_AGENT_BACKEND.
    • Common runtime deps plugins assume: ffmpeg, git, ripgrep.
  • Excluded: electron, native macOS/Windows toolchains, dev tooling.

The base image is node:24-bookworm-slim. The user inside the container is non-root (uid 10001).

15.2 Persistence

Three paths the operator should mount as volumes; they map onto existing OD env vars from the root AGENTS.md, so no daemon code change is needed.

Mount path Env var Purpose
/data/od OD_DATA_DIR Projects, SQLite, artifacts, installed plugins (<OD_DATA_DIR>/plugins)
/data/config OD_MEDIA_CONFIG_DIR Provider credentials (media-config.json)
/data/marketplaces (under OD_DATA_DIR) Cached marketplace indexes

Mounting /data/od alone is the minimal config. Splitting /data/config separately is the recommended hosted-mode pattern so secrets follow a different lifecycle than data.

15.3 Configuration

All configuration flows through env vars and an optional pre-baked config file. Minimal hosted env:

OD_PORT=17456
OD_BIND_HOST=0.0.0.0                 # the variable the daemon already reads ([`apps/daemon/src/server.ts`](../apps/daemon/src/server.ts))
OD_DATA_DIR=/data/od
OD_MEDIA_CONFIG_DIR=/data/config
OD_TRUST_DEFAULT=restricted          # safe default for hosted (§9) — introduced in Phase 5
OD_AGENT_BACKEND=claude              # default code agent backend
OD_API_TOKEN=<random>                # required when OD_BIND_HOST != 127.0.0.1 — Phase 5 introduces the bearer middleware
OD_SNAPSHOT_UNREFERENCED_TTL_DAYS=30 # see §11.4: unreferenced applied_plugin_snapshots expire after this window; set to 0 to keep forever
OD_SNAPSHOT_RETENTION_DAYS=          # opt-in (default unset): also retire referenced snapshots once their run/conversation/project is terminal and applied_at is older than the window
OD_SNAPSHOT_GC_INTERVAL_MS=21600000  # snapshot GC worker tick (Phase 5)
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...                # provider keys; also storable via `od config set`
TAVILY_API_KEY=...

Current implementation vs. spec (migration note):

  • OD_BIND_HOST already exists in the daemon (apps/daemon/src/server.ts, apps/daemon/src/origin-validation.ts). Earlier draft text referred to the same variable as OD_HOST; the correct name is OD_BIND_HOST, and this spec uses it everywhere. No OD_HOST alias is introduced — that would invite double-name drift.
  • OD_TRUST_DEFAULT, OD_API_TOKEN, and the corresponding bearer-token middleware are not yet implemented; they are part of Phase 5 "Cloud deployment + pluggable storage" (§15.7, §16 Phase 5). Until landed, hosted deployments must rely on a reverse proxy / network ACL for access control; §15.7 explicitly calls out this prerequisite.

Anything settable via the desktop UI is also settable via docker exec od od config set ... or by mounting a pre-baked media-config.json into /data/config.

15.4 One-command deploy

Local laptop:

docker run --rm -p 17456:17456 ghcr.io/open-design/od:latest
open http://localhost:17456

Persistent server:

docker run -d --name od \
  -p 17456:17456 \
  -v od-data:/data/od \
  -v od-config:/data/config \
  -e OD_DATA_DIR=/data/od \
  -e OD_MEDIA_CONFIG_DIR=/data/config \
  -e OD_BIND_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e OD_API_TOKEN="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" \
  ghcr.io/open-design/od:latest

Reach the same surfaces inside the container:

docker exec od od plugin install github:open-design/plugins/make-a-deck
docker exec od od project create --plugin make-a-deck --json
docker exec od od status --json

15.5 Multi-cloud portability

The image is deliberately cloud-agnostic. One container image runs on every major cloud's container service:

Cloud Container service Persistent storage Secrets
AWS ECS / Fargate / EKS / App Runner EFS (NFS), EBS, S3 adapter Secrets Manager / SSM
Google Cloud Cloud Run / GKE Filestore, GCS-fuse Secret Manager
Azure Container Apps / AKS Azure Files Key Vault
Alibaba Cloud SAE / ACK NAS, OSS adapter KMS
Tencent Cloud CloudRun / TKE CFS, COS adapter SSM
Huawei Cloud CCE / CCI SFS, OBS adapter KMS
Self-hosted docker-compose, Docker Swarm, k3s, k0s Bind mounts, NFS, Longhorn env / SOPS / Vault

Two reference manifests ship with OD and are versioned alongside the image:

  • New tools/pack/docker-compose.yml — daemon + optional reverse proxy + optional Postgres for §15.6.
  • New tools/pack/helm/ — Helm chart with values presets for each cloud's volume + secret patterns. The chart deliberately stays generic — cloud-specific bootstrap (CloudFormation / Deployment Manager / ARM / Aliyun ROS / Tencent TIC / Huawei RFS) lives in a separate open-design/deploy repo so it can move at its own cadence.

15.6 Pluggable storage and database (Phase 5)

The daemon's filesystem and SQLite usage is encapsulated behind two narrow interfaces:

  • ProjectStorage — read/write/list project files.
  • DaemonDb — typed wrapper around SQLite (already exists today).

v1 ships only the local-disk + SQLite implementation. Phase 5 adds:

  • ProjectStorage adapter for S3-compatible blob stores. Works for AWS S3, GCS (S3-compatible mode), Azure Blob (S3-compat shim or native), Aliyun OSS, Tencent COS, Huawei OBS — all speak the S3 API or have a thin shim.
  • DaemonDb adapter for Postgres so multiple daemon replicas can share state. Useful behind a load balancer or when running serverless containers that may scale to zero.

The on-disk layout stays identical between adapters so a single-tenant deployment can migrate to multi-replica without re-importing projects.

15.7 Hosted-mode security defaults

Defaults shift toward safer behavior when the daemon runs in a container:

  • OD_TRUST_DEFAULT=restricted is the recommended default. Capabilities (mcp, subprocess, bash, network) require explicit operator opt-in via od plugin trust <id> or a OD_TRUSTED_PLUGINS allow-list env var.
  • The image runs as a non-root user; plugin sandboxes inherit this.
  • The HTTP API listens on OD_BIND_HOST; when set to 0.0.0.0, once Phase 5 lands OD_API_TOKEN is required and is checked on every request via Authorization: Bearer <token>. When unset, the daemon refuses to bind to a public interface and exits with an error. Before Phase 5 (i.e., today's implementation), hosted deployments must isolate the daemon port behind a reverse proxy / network ACL.
  • A future hardening pass (Phase 5) optionally runs each plugin's bash/MCP work inside per-run nested containers (firecracker / gVisor / sysbox) so an untrusted plugin cannot escape the run boundary. Not required for v1 single-tenant deployments.
  • Authentication scope (v1): single-tenant only — one shared OD_API_TOKEN. Multi-tenant auth (per-user OAuth, RBAC, project ownership, billing) is explicitly out of scope for v1 and tracked as an open item in §18.

15.8 What this unlocks (ecosystem motions)

  1. Self-hosted enterprise. A company hosts a private OD instance, registers an internal open-design-marketplace.json (od marketplace add https://internal/...), restricting plugins to internally vetted ones. Their designers and PMs use the desktop client locally; their CI uses docker exec od od ….
  2. Partner integrations. Vendors (CMS, design tools, BI platforms, SaaS dashboards) embed OD inside their stack to add design generation. One image, no per-vendor port.
  3. Cloud-native CI. "Generate slides for the daily report" becomes a GitHub Action / GitLab pipeline / Tekton task that spins up an ephemeral OD container, applies a plugin, drops artifacts to S3 / OSS / COS / OBS.
  4. Sovereign-cloud reach. OD runs unchanged on Aliyun / Tencent / Huawei for customers in regulated regions — no rewrite, no separate distribution channel.

16. Phased implementation plan

Phase 0 — Spec freeze (1–2 days)

  • This document lands as docs/plugins-spec.md (current).
  • JSON Schemas at docs/schemas/open-design.plugin.v1.json and open-design.marketplace.v1.json.
  • Pure-TS contracts at packages/contracts/src/plugins/{manifest,context,apply,marketplace,installed}.ts.
  • Migration note: existing skills/, design-systems/, craft/ are 100% backward compatible. SKILL.md frontmatter unchanged.

Validation: pnpm guard, pnpm typecheck, pnpm --filter @open-design/contracts test.

Phase 1 — Loader, installer, persistence + headless MVP CLI loop (5–7 days)

Design rule. When Phase 1 ships, an external code agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, CI scripts) must be able to walk the complete install plugin → create project → run → consume artifact loop without any UI. The spec calls the CLI the canonical agent-facing API (§12); therefore the minimum CLI loop must ship together with the plugin verbs in Phase 1, not be deferred to Phase 2C.

Phase 1 contents (merges the original Phase 1 with the minimum subset of the original Phase 2C):

  • packages/plugin-runtime with parsers/adapters/merger/resolver/validator.
  • apps/daemon/src/plugins/{registry,installer,apply}.ts; refactor existing skills/DS/craft loaders to delegate.
  • SQLite migration for installed_plugins, plugin_marketplaces. The applied_plugin_snapshots schema also lands in this phase (full §10 pipeline support waits until Phase 2A).
  • Endpoints: GET /api/plugins, GET /api/plugins/:id, POST /api/plugins/install (folder + github tarball), POST /api/plugins/:id/uninstall, POST /api/plugins/:id/apply, GET /api/atoms, GET /api/applied-plugins/:snapshotId.
  • Plugin CLI verbs: od plugin install/list/info/uninstall/apply/doctor. od plugin apply --json is required by Phase 2's inline rail and by external code agents, and must already return an ApplyResult containing appliedPlugin: AppliedPluginSnapshot.
  • Headless MVP CLI loop (newly pulled forward): od project create/list/info, od run start/watch/cancel (with --follow and ND-JSON streaming), od files list/read. These wrap endpoints already used by the desktop UI today (POST /api/projects, POST /api/runs, GET /api/runs/:id/events, project list/read endpoints) — no new HTTP surface, only CLI surface.
  • <daemonDataDir>/plugins/<id>/ write path with safe extraction (path-traversal guard, size cap, symlink rejection).

Validation:

  • pnpm --filter @open-design/plugin-runtime test (parser fixtures: pure SKILL.md, pure claude plugin, metadata-only open-design.json, all three combined, SKILL frontmatter mapping).
  • pnpm --filter @open-design/daemon test. pnpm guard, pnpm typecheck.
  • End-to-end headless smoke (equivalent to the §12.5 walkthrough): od plugin install ./fixtures/sample-pluginod project create --plugin <id> --jsonod run start --project <pid> --plugin <id> --followod files read <pid> <artifact>. The produced artifact bytes must match exactly what the same plugin produces under the Phase 2A UI flow.
  • Apply purity smoke: after od plugin apply <id> followed by cancel-before-send, the project cwd is empty of staged assets, no .mcp.json is generated, but the applied_plugin_snapshots row exists (unreferenced from any run/project).

Phase 2A — Inline UI + full snapshot persistence + daemon-only plugin runs (4–6 days)

  • New components: ContextChipStrip, InlinePluginsRail, PluginInputsForm (§11.6).
  • Inline rail integrated into NewProjectPanel first; ChatComposer integration moves to Phase 2B.
  • applyPlugin() wiring; POST /api/plugins/:id/apply returns the full ApplyResult with inputs: InputFieldSpec[] and appliedPlugin.
  • POST /api/projects and POST /api/runs accept pluginId / pluginInputs / appliedPluginSnapshotId (§11.5); persistence links applied_plugin_snapshot_id from runs / conversations / projects.
  • Daemon composeSystemPrompt() accepts ResolvedContext and emits ## Active plugin — <title> plus a ## Plugin inputs block.
  • Plugin block renderer lifted into contracts (§11.8 rule 2): packages/contracts/src/prompts/plugin-block.ts exports the pure renderPluginBlock(snapshot: AppliedPluginSnapshot): string; both apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts and packages/contracts/src/prompts/system.ts import it. Phase 1's inline string template is removed in this phase. No CI byte-equality fixture needed — single import is the guarantee.
  • Web API-fallback rejects plugin runs (§11.8 rule 1): when the web sidecar detects a fallback path with pluginId, it returns 409 plugin-requires-daemon; the UI surfaces "start daemon or switch to desktop / headless".
  • §10.3 GenUI minimum surface set lands:
    • apps/daemon/src/genui/: registry / event publisher / genui_surfaces store for the four built-in surface kinds (form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt).
    • SQLite migration: the genui_surfaces table plus its three indexes.
    • HTTP: GET /api/runs/:runId/genui, GET /api/projects/:projectId/genui, POST /api/runs/:runId/genui/:surfaceId/respond, POST /api/projects/:projectId/genui/:surfaceId/revoke, POST /api/projects/:projectId/genui/prefill.
    • SSE / ND-JSON streams add genui_surface_request, genui_surface_response, genui_surface_timeout, and genui_state_synced events.
    • Web: GenUISurfaceRenderer mounted inside the ProjectView chat stream; GenUIInbox drawer lists project-tier persisted surfaces; revoke entry is functional.
    • CLI: od ui list/show/respond/revoke/prefill; od run watch ND-JSON includes genui_* events; exit code 73 wired in.
    • Persistence behavior verification: after one project completes an oauth-prompt, a second conversation triggering the same surface id does not broadcast a new request; the event stream still emits genui_surface_response { respondedBy: 'cache' }.
  • §9 connector capability gate lands:
    • New apps/daemon/src/plugins/connector-gate.ts (§11.3 table): apply reads od.connectors.required[], calls connectorService.listAll() to compute connectorsResolved, and auto-derives an implicit oauth-prompt GenUI surface (§10.3.1, oauth.route='connector') for each required connector that is not yet connected.
    • SQLite migration: applied_plugin_snapshots gains connectors_required_json / connectors_resolved_json / mcp_servers_json (§11.4).
    • apps/daemon/src/tool-tokens.ts calls connector-gate before issuing a connector tool token, validating plugin trust × connector:<id>. /api/tools/connectors/execute re-validates on every call.
    • od plugin doctor enforces: (a) every od.connectors.required[].id exists in connectorService catalog; (b) every tools[] is a subset of that connector's allowedToolNames; (c) when an oauth-prompt surface has oauth.route='connector', its oauth.connectorId is one of the plugin's declared connectors.
    • Exit code 66 / 409 capabilities-required data.required includes connector:<id> entries.
    • od plugin trust and od plugin apply --grant-caps accept the connector:<id> form (§9.1).

Validation: e2e in e2e/:

(a) install local plugin → Home inline rail → click plugin → home prefilled → run produces design; the run carries applied_plugin_snapshot_id in SQLite, and the applied_plugin_snapshots row contains manifest_source_digest and inputs_json.

(b) Apply then cancel before sending; project cwd has no staged assets and .mcp.json does not exist.

(c) od plugin replay <runId> reproduces the exact same prompt even after the source plugin has been upgraded via od plugin update (snapshot is immutable).

(d) In web API-fallback mode (OD daemon stopped, browser talking provider directly), the inline rail still renders plugin cards but clicking "Use" pops a daemon-required notice; resuming the daemon restores normal behavior.

(e) A plugin declares both oauth-prompt and confirmation surfaces: after conversation A completes them, conversation B (same project) re-applies the plugin. In the new run the oauth-prompt (persist=project) is served from cache; the confirmation (persist=run) re-asks. After od ui revoke, the next run re-asks the oauth-prompt.

(f) Connector trust gate. A local plugin declares od.connectors.required = [{ id: 'slack', tools: ['channels.list'] }] but does not explicitly grant connector:slack:

  • apply (no --grant-caps) → exit 66 / 409 with data.required including connector:slack and data.remediation listing od plugin trust <id> --caps connector:slack.
  • apply --grant-caps connector:slack while the connector is not connected yet → daemon auto-derives an implicit oauth-prompt (surface id __auto_connector_slack, persist=project); the user completes the existing connector OAuth flow in the UI; the surface flips to resolved; applied_plugin_snapshots.connectors_resolved_json contains { id:'slack', accountLabel:..., status:'connected' }.
  • Re-applying the same plugin in the same project: connector:slack is connected → no oauth-prompt is derived; the snapshot's connectors_resolved_json[0].status='connected' hits cache.
  • A second plugin declares od.connectors.required = [{ id: 'notion', tools: [...] }] but does not declare connector:notion capability → apply fails with exit 66; additionally the token-issuance path is verified by curl /api/tools/connectors/execute directly (simulating a bypass attempt) which returns 403 connector-not-granted.

Phase 2B — Marketplace deep UI + ChatComposer apply (4–6 days)

  • New routes /marketplace, /marketplace/:id.
  • New components: MarketplaceView, PluginDetailView (§11.6).
  • ChatComposer integrates the inline rail (§8.4).
  • Preview rendering through /api/plugins/:id/preview (mirrors today's /api/skills/:id/example) and implements the §9.2 preview sandbox.

Validation: e2e in e2e/: install local plugin → marketplace → detail preview sandbox → "Use" → Home or ChatComposer prefilled → run produces design. Restricted previews cannot access /api/*.

Phase 2C — Remaining CLI / files write / advanced watch (2–3 days)

The minimum project + run + files CLI from the original Phase 2C is now in Phase 1; this phase covers only the advanced operations.

  • od project delete/import, od run list/logs --since, od files write/upload/delete/diff, od conversation list/new/info.
  • These wrap existing endpoints; no new HTTP surface.

Validation: extend the §12.5 walkthrough — od project import an external folder → od plugin applyod run replay <runId> reruns on top of the imported project.

Phase 3 — Federated marketplace + tiered trust (3–5 days)

  • od marketplace add/remove/trust/untrust/list/refresh; od plugin install <name> resolves through marketplaces.
  • GET /api/marketplaces, POST /api/marketplaces, GET /api/marketplaces/:id/plugins.
  • Trust UI on PluginDetailView (capability checklist + "Grant" action).
  • Apply pipeline gates by trust + capabilities_granted.
  • Bundle plugins (multiple skills + DS + craft in one repo) — installer fans out into the registry under namespaced ids.
  • od plugin doctor <id> runs full validation.

Validation: install plugin from a local mock marketplace.json, rotate ref, uninstall. Restricted plugin cannot start MCP server until "Grant" is clicked.

Phase 4 — Atoms, publish-back, full CLI parity (1–2 weeks, splittable)

  • Document atoms in docs/atoms.md; expose via GET /api/atoms.
  • od plugin export <projectId> --as od|claude-plugin|agent-skill — generates a publish-ready folder from an existing project.
  • od plugin run <id> --input k=v --follow — shorthand wrapper for apply + run start + watch.
  • od plugin scaffold interactive starter.
  • od plugin publish --to anthropics-skills|awesome-agent-skills|clawhub opens a PR template.
  • Remaining CLI parity: od conversation list/new/info, od skills/design-systems/craft/atoms list/show, od status/doctor/version, od config get/set/list, od marketplace search. All purely CLI work — endpoints exist or are trivial.
  • Optional: extract atoms into skills/_official/<atom>/SKILL.md. Only after Phases 1–3 are stable.
  • §10.3.5 full AG-UI alignment:
    • New package @open-design/agui-adapter — bidirectionally maps OD's PersistedAgentEvent + GenUIEvent onto AG-UI canonical events (agent.message, tool_call, state_update, ui.surface_requested, ui.surface_responded).
    • Daemon adds an optional /api/runs/:runId/agui SSE endpoint that emits AG-UI canonical events so CopilotKit / other AG-UI clients can consume an OD run unchanged.
    • Plugin manifest upgrade allows od.genui.surfaces[].component — a relative path to a plugin-bundled React component (capability gate genui:custom-component), loaded by the desktop / web renderer inside a sandbox.
    • Open-Ended (MCP-Apps / Open-JSON) mode: plugins push arbitrary JSON UI trees through an MCP server, rendered by desktop / web under a constrained schema.

Validation: (a) install a published plugin → export from a real project that used it → diff the produced manifest against the original. (b) "UI vs CLI parity test": pick 5 desktop-UI workflows, replay each one through od … only, compare produced artifacts byte-for-byte (per the §12.6 implementation rule).

Phase 5 — Cloud deployment + pluggable storage (parallel, splittable)

This phase is independent of Phases 1–4 and can run in parallel as soon as Phase 1 lands (since the headless mode and the daemon contract are stable from Phase 1 on).

  • Container image (week 1): multi-arch linux/amd64 + linux/arm64 Dockerfile with the contents listed in §15.1; CI to push :edge on every main commit and :<version> on tag.
  • Reference manifests: tools/pack/docker-compose.yml and tools/pack/helm/. The compose file demonstrates the daemon + reverse proxy pattern; the Helm chart parameterizes volume + secret patterns for any cloud.
  • Bound-API-token guard (new in Phase 5): daemon refuses to bind OD_BIND_HOST=0.0.0.0 without OD_API_TOKEN; bearer-token middleware on /api/* (skipped only when host is loopback).
  • ProjectStorage adapter for S3-compatible blob stores (works for AWS S3, GCS S3-compat, Azure Blob via shim, Aliyun OSS, Tencent COS, Huawei OBS).
  • DaemonDb adapter for Postgres (so multi-replica deployments share state).
  • AppliedPluginSnapshot retention enforcement worker: the expires_at column added in Phase 1 is now enforced. A daemon background job (default every 6 h, knob OD_SNAPSHOT_GC_INTERVAL_MS) deletes rows where expires_at IS NOT NULL AND expires_at <= now(). Unreferenced snapshots get expires_at = applied_at + OD_SNAPSHOT_UNREFERENCED_TTL_DAYS (default 30; 0 disables) at insert time; referenced snapshots stay NULL (pinned per §8.2.1). Operators may set OD_SNAPSHOT_RETENTION_DAYS to additionally retire referenced rows once their referencing run/conversation/project is terminal. Each deletion writes an audit log entry. CLI escape hatch: od plugin snapshots prune --before <ts> for forced cleanup.
  • Per-cloud one-click templates in a separate open-design/deploy repo (CloudFormation, Deployment Manager, ARM, Aliyun ROS, Tencent TIC, Huawei RFS) — non-blocking; track separately.

Validation:

  • docker run smoke: image starts, web UI renders, od plugin install works inside the container.
  • Multi-cloud smoke: deploy the compose file to AWS Fargate, GCP Cloud Run, Azure Container Apps, Aliyun SAE, Tencent CloudRun, Huawei CCE; run a fixed plugin → produced artifact bytes identical across clouds.
  • Pluggable storage smoke: same plugin, same project, alternating between local-disk + SQLite and S3 + Postgres adapters; produced artifacts identical.

17. Examples

17.1 Minimum-viable plugin (just SKILL.md)

OD reads it as a plugin via the existing od: frontmatter loader documented in skills-protocol.md. No open-design.json needed — the plugin lacks marketplace polish but is fully runnable.

my-plugin/
└── SKILL.md
---
name: my-plugin
description: One-paragraph what+when.
od:
  mode: prototype
  scenario: marketing
---
# My Plugin
Workflow steps...

17.2 Enriched plugin (cross-catalog publishable, full OD product surface)

my-plugin/
├── SKILL.md
├── README.md
├── open-design.json
├── preview/
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── poster.png
│   └── demo.mp4
└── examples/
    └── b2b-saas/index.html

SKILL.md stays portable — Cursor / Codex / OpenClaw read it directly. open-design.json adds preview, query, chip strip, capabilities. The repo lists cleanly on every catalog in §14 without modification.

17.3 Bundle plugin (multiple skills + DS + craft in one repo)

my-bundle/
├── SKILL.md                          # bundle-level overview (catalog uses this)
├── open-design.json                  # kind: 'bundle'; lists nested skills
├── skills/
│   ├── deck-skeleton/SKILL.md
│   └── deck-finalize/SKILL.md
├── design-systems/linear-clone/DESIGN.md
└── craft/deck-pacing.md

The installer fans out nested skills/design-systems/craft into the registry under namespaced ids (my-bundle/deck-skeleton, etc.), so any of them can be referenced individually by other plugins.

18. Risks and open questions

Risk Mitigation
Schema drift between OD plugin and the broader skill spec open-design.json is sidecar-only; it never modifies SKILL.md. CI tests run against the public anthropics/skills repo.
Arbitrary GitHub install = supply-chain risk restricted default; capability prompt mandatory before bash/hooks/MCP; pinned-ref recording.
composeSystemPrompt() is already 200+ lines The ## Active plugin block is appended in the existing place; no reordering of layers.
ExamplesTab vs Marketplace overlap Phase 2 keeps ExamplesTab as is; Phase 3 folds it into Marketplace as a "Local skills" tab.
Atoms-as-plugins is large Entry slice shipped: bundled atom SKILL.md bodies + renderActiveStageBlock() exist, while the base OD designer/discovery prompt remains in daemon code until the remaining §23 migration is complete.
Project-local plugins committed to user repos Discovery only at <projectCwd>/.open-design/plugins/; opt-in via od plugin install --project.
Trust model leaves community plugins half-functional by default Detail page surfaces a clear capability checklist with a one-click "Grant all" action; restricted-mode behavior is explicit, not silent.
Plugins shipping their own MCP servers may fail to start od plugin doctor runs a dry-launch of declared MCP commands; failures surfaced before "Use".
Unbounded growth of applied_plugin_snapshots Per PB2 (resolved): unreferenced snapshots auto-expire at applied_at + OD_SNAPSHOT_UNREFERENCED_TTL_DAYS (default 30 d); referenced snapshots stay pinned forever (reproducibility wins); GC worker lands in Phase 5 (§16). od plugin snapshots prune --before <ts> remains as a forced-cleanup escape hatch; rows with status='stale' can be archived to external storage in batch.
Drift between daemon composeSystemPrompt and contracts composeSystemPrompt Per PB1 (resolved): the plugin block renderer lives in packages/contracts/src/prompts/plugin-block.ts from Phase 2A onward; both composers import the same function. No CI byte-equality fixture needed — single-import compile-time guarantee.
od.pipeline devloop infinite loop burning quota until is required and uses a restricted syntax; OD_MAX_DEVLOOP_ITERATIONS ceiling (default 10); both UI and CLI expose a "Stop refining" break action.
OD_HOST / OD_BIND_HOST naming drift Spec uses the variable the daemon already reads, OD_BIND_HOST; no OD_HOST alias is introduced; §15.3 explicitly notes the deviation from earlier draft text.
Hosted deployments without the bound-API-token guard could leak the API publicly (pre-Phase 5 must rely on a reverse proxy) Once Phase 5 lands, daemon refuses to bind OD_BIND_HOST=0.0.0.0 without OD_API_TOKEN; bearer-token middleware enforced on /api/*; §15.3 / §15.7 record the current vs. target gap.
Sovereign-cloud customers (Aliyun / Tencent / Huawei) need provider-specific secret + storage integrations S3-compatible adapter covers all three for blob storage (Phase 5); env-var-based secrets work everywhere; cloud-specific KMS integrations are non-blocking (post-v1).
Multi-cloud testing matrix is large Phase 5 ships a single canonical compose smoke (one cloud), then adds clouds incrementally; per-cloud one-click templates live in open-design/deploy and can move at their own cadence (§15.5).
Malicious plugins phishing the user via GenUI surfaces od.genui.surfaces[] must be declared in the manifest and pass od plugin doctor; runtime rejects undeclared surface kinds / surface ids; oauth-prompt and confirmation always show "from plugin , vetted by marketplace "; restricted plugins must explicitly grant network before raising an oauth-prompt (§9).
AG-UI ecosystem may evolve, drifting OD's wire format from canonical AG-UI OD-native GenUIEvent remains the internal source of truth. @open-design/agui-adapter is an external projection layer, so upstream protocol revs do not couple to the daemon or web renderer release cadence.
Cross-conversation reuse via genui_surfaces may make users "forget what they authorized" The web GenUIInbox and od ui list --project <id> must enumerate every persist=project resolved row with revoke entry points; hosted mode can default-expire via OD_GENUI_PROJECT_TTL_DAYS; revoke writes an audit log entry.

Open questions worth confirming before code lands:

  • Default trust tier — keep tiered (current) or shift to capability-scoped from day 1?
  • Marketplace JSON shape — diverge from anthropic's marketplace.json shape, or stay byte-compatible so existing claude-plugin marketplaces are reusable as-is? (Default: stay byte-compatible.)
  • od plugin run headless contract — sufficient as-is, or also expose an HTTP POST endpoint for non-CLI agents? (Default: CLI only in v1; HTTP added in Phase 4 if needed.)
  • Multi-tenant auth (per-user OAuth, RBAC, project ownership, billing) is explicitly out of scope for v1. The Docker image is single-tenant by design (one OD_API_TOKEN). Multi-tenancy is a post-v1 story that needs its own spec — confirm this scoping is acceptable for the first ecosystem release.
  • Trust propagation in hosted mode — current spec locks arbitrary GitHub / URL / local plugins to restricted by default, and third-party marketplaces do not propagate trust by default. Confirm whether hosted deployments may trust individual plugins through OD_TRUSTED_PLUGINS, or whether operators must first trust the source marketplace.
  • Discovery-time hot reload — should the daemon watch <daemonDataDir>/plugins/ for filesystem changes (developer ergonomics), or only reload after od plugin install/update/uninstall (stability)? (Default: watch, with a 500ms debounce.)
  • Versioning policy — pin to a tag/SHA on install, or always track the default branch with an opt-in pin? (Default: pin to the resolved ref at install time; od plugin update re-resolves.)
  • When to lift the plugin prompt block into contractsresolved (PB1, see docs/plans/plugins-implementation.md §7). Lift in Phase 2A as a pure renderPluginBlock(snapshot) function in packages/contracts/src/prompts/plugin-block.ts; both composers import it; v1 fallback rejection rule (§11.8) is preserved; Phase 4 turns on fallback support as a one-line wiring change. The Phase 1–4 byte-equality CI fixture is no longer needed.
  • AppliedPluginSnapshot retentionresolved (PB2, see docs/plans/plugins-implementation.md §7). Snapshots referenced by any run / conversation / project stay pinned forever (expires_at = NULL); unreferenced snapshots get expires_at = applied_at + OD_SNAPSHOT_UNREFERENCED_TTL_DAYS (default 30, 0 disables). The "expire even referenced rows" knob OD_SNAPSHOT_RETENTION_DAYS is operator-opt-in only (default unset), and applies only when the referencing row is terminal. The expires_at column lands in Phase 1 (§11.4); the GC worker lands in Phase 5 (§16). The od plugin snapshots prune CLI remains as a forced-cleanup escape hatch.
  • Devloop billing granularity — should each stage iteration be billed / audited / cancelled independently? (Default: independent audit + cancel; billing granularity follows the provider's actual consumption rather than introducing a new spec-level unit.)
  • Whether od.taskKind becomes a first-class marketplace filter — does the existing kind / mode / scenario UI need a reorder to surface the new taskKind? (Default: marketplace adds a top-level taskKind tab; existing filters drop to a secondary tier.)
  • Should od.genui.surfaces[].component ship in v1?resolved as a gated extension path. The manifest schema accepts the field and od plugin doctor enforces genui:custom-component plus traversal guards. The built-in product renderer remains the default for form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt; custom components are sandboxed add-ons, not a replacement for core collaboration UI.
  • Coupling between GenUI persisted state and AppliedPluginSnapshot — when a plugin upgrades and surface.schema changes, old rows auto-invalidate; should we additionally force a re-apply (generating a new AppliedPluginSnapshot) or allow the surface to invalidate while leaving the snapshot untouched? (Default: surface only; od plugin doctor flags schema drift; replay still uses the old snapshot.)
  • Timing of AG-UI protocol adoptionresolved. @open-design/agui-adapter and GET /api/runs/:runId/agui have shipped as optional interoperability. OD-native GenUI remains the internal renderer and CopilotKit is not a required product dependency.

19. Why this is a meaningful step for Open Design

  • Inherited supply. Every public agent skill on anthropics/skills, awesome-agent-skills, clawhub, and skills.sh is one optional open-design.json away from being an OD plugin — and reciprocally, every OD plugin is publishable to all four catalogs without modification.
  • Boundary-clean. New code lives in two pure-TS packages (packages/plugin-runtime, packages/contracts/src/plugins/*) and one daemon module group (apps/daemon/src/plugins/); no cross-app coupling, no contracts package leaks, no SKILL.md fork. Honors every constraint in the root AGENTS.md.
  • Reversible refactors. Existing loaders (apps/daemon/src/skills.ts etc.) and composeSystemPrompt() keep their public shape; Phase 1 is a drop-in delegate, Phase 2 only appends a prompt block.
  • CLI from day 1. Every new endpoint has a matching od plugin … subcommand, so the same surface is reachable from any code agent without the desktop app.
  • Marketplace-first product narrative. From Phase 2 onward, the home screen becomes "input + chip strip + deep marketplace" — exactly the inversion described in the brief: 主交互 = 输入框 + 插件社区.

20. Post-v1 extensibility — artifact taxonomy, evaluators, and production handoff

This section is intentionally a contract reservation, not a v1 implementation commitment. The plugin runtime, pipeline, and marketplace can ship without the full evaluator and production-handoff stack, but the core data model must leave stable places for those capabilities so later work does not fork preview/export/deploy logic.

20.1 Artifact taxonomy

Every artifact produced by a plugin should eventually carry three orthogonal labels:

Field Meaning Initial values
artifactKind What the artifact is as a product object html-prototype, deck, interactive-video, design-system, code-diff, production-app, asset-pack
renderKind How OD previews or opens it html, jsx, pptx, markdown, video, image, diff, repo
handoffKind What downstream delivery promise it makes design-only, implementation-plan, patch, deployable-app

The v1 ArtifactManifest extension in §11.5.1 already reserves these optional fields. v1 producers may infer them conservatively; v1 consumers must preserve unknown values. This prevents later phases from relying on filename sniffing (index.html, slides.json, diff.patch) or overloading od.mode for export and handoff decisions.

20.2 Evaluator atoms

The existing critique-theater and devloop stages are the right entry point, but "critique" must not remain purely LLM-subjective. Future evaluator capabilities should land as first-party atoms that can be scheduled in od.pipeline.stages[]:

  • visual-diff compares screenshots or Figma captures against generated HTML.
  • responsive-check validates common viewport breakpoints.
  • accessibility-check runs automated a11y checks and summarizes manual issues.
  • brand-consistency-check compares color, typography, spacing, and tone against the active DESIGN.md.
  • build-test runs package-scoped build / typecheck / lint commands for code outputs.
  • screenshot-regression records and compares preview snapshots across devloop iterations.

Evaluator results should be stored as run events and, once stable, summarized on the artifact manifest as evaluationSummary plus links to detailed reports. They do not require a new plugin primitive: they are atoms, capability-gated like any other atom, and can participate in the existing repeat / until devloop condition.

20.3 Production handoff

code-migration and figma-migration can initially produce html-prototype, code-diff, or implementation-plan artifacts. A later production-handoff phase upgrades that path into a deployable business-code workflow without changing the plugin substrate:

  1. Target stack contract. The run records framework, package manager, styling system, component library, routing model, and test command assumptions.
  2. Design-token mapping. Generated tokens map to existing app tokens or create a migration plan before code is patched.
  3. Component mapping. The agent maps artifact-level components to repo components, shadcn-style primitives, or new local components with ownership boundaries.
  4. Patch safety. The output is a reviewable diff with build/test evidence, not an opaque generated repo overwrite.
  5. Delivery evidence. The final artifact carries handoffKind: 'patch' or handoffKind: 'deployable-app', evaluator summaries, and export/deploy targets.

This keeps v1 honest: plugins can already organize design-to-code workflows, but full production delivery is a stricter contract layered on top of artifactKind, evaluator atoms, and repo-aware patch orchestration.

21. Scenario coverage matrix and delivery roadmap

This section is the honest accounting between the four product scenarios already declared in §1 ("Four product scenarios": new-generation / code-migration / figma-migration / tune-collab) and what v1 actually ships. It is not a new design surface; it consolidates the gaps already implied across §10 (atoms, several marked (planned)), §16 (phased plan), §18 (open questions), and §20 (post-v1 reservations) into one place so future implementers can use it as a single reconciliation table without re-reading the whole spec.

The four "core agent-native design problems" the OD product targets, restated to make this section navigable:

  1. Existing Figma → HTML / artifact migration, then code-driven tuning, design-system consistency, and collaboration on top of the migrated artifact.
  2. Existing-codebase refresh — make an old codebase look better while staying patch-safe.
  3. 0→1 design — Figma-class design, attractive prototypes, decks, interactive video, all from a brief.
  4. Design → deliverable production code — turn a generated design into business-grade code that ships.

21.1 Coverage matrix at a glance

# Scenario taskKind spec covers the contract? v1 implementation status What blocks "fully native one-click v1"
1 Figma migration figma-migration yes (§1, §10 atoms reserved) partialfigma-extract and token-map are (planned) in §10; pipeline shape and provenance are ready Need to implement the two (planned) atoms; everything else (DS injection, GenUI OAuth, devloop, snapshot) is already in v1
2 Existing-codebase refresh code-migration yes (§1, §10, §20.3) not in v1code-import / rewrite-plan / patch-edit / diff-review all (planned); build-test evaluator is §20.2 Need the §20.3 stricter contract end-to-end (target stack, token mapping, component mapping, patch safety, build evidence)
3 0→1 design (prototype, deck, interactive video) new-generation yes (§1 default reference pipeline) shipped in v1 — every required atom (discovery-question-form, direction-picker, todo-write, live-artifact, media-image/video/audio, critique-theater) is already implemented Optional: lift §20.2 visual-diff / brand-consistency-check into Phase 2 so critique gains an objective signal
4 Design → deliverable production code tune-collab (handoff side) partial (§20.3 explicitly post-v1) not in v1 — v1 caps at handoffKind: 'design-only' | 'implementation-plan' | 'patch'; 'deployable-app' is post-v1 Either land §20.3 in full, or formalize the §14.3 OD ↔ external code-agent handoff as the v1 production-code path

Reading rule: scenario 3 is the only one v1 fully covers natively. Scenarios 1 and 2 have correct contracts and naming reserved by v1 but require additional atom implementations; scenario 4 is explicitly post-v1 and leans on §14.3 in the meantime.

21.2 What v1 actually solves for "agent-native design"

v1 stops at scenario 3 in terms of native completeness, but the substrate it ships is the right substrate for all four scenarios. The five contracts below are the parts of the spec that future scenario work inherits without modification:

  1. Plugin = workflow contract, not UI extension (§1, §13). The Figma-era assumption "plugin owns a panel inside the host" is replaced by "plugin is a manifest + atoms + assets that the agent consumes through ApplyResult." Scenarios 1, 2, and 4 inherit this without change; nothing about migration or production handoff requires reopening this decision.
  2. od.pipeline + devloop convergence (§10.1, §10.2). repeat: true + until is the convergence mechanism scenarios 1, 2, 3 all need: scenario 3 converges on critique score, scenario 1 converges on token-map fidelity, scenario 2 converges on build-test passing. The same loop primitive works for all three; only the until signal differs.
  3. GenUI cross-conversation persisted state (§10.3, genui_surfaces table in §11.4). One-time Figma OAuth, brand confirmation, target stack confirmation, and direction picks are remembered at project / conversation / run tier and reused across subsequent multi-turn chats. Scenarios 1 (Figma OAuth) and 2 (target stack confirmation) depend on this primitive; without it, every new conversation re-asks and the experience collapses.
  4. AppliedPluginSnapshot immutability + replay (§8.2.1). Reproducibility across plugin upgrades is what makes scenarios 1 and 2 auditable six months later — "which figma file → which token map → which generated diff" is recoverable from one snapshot row. Scenario 3 benefits less but pays no cost.
  5. CLI-first headless mode (§11.7, §14.3). This is the v1 fallback path for scenario 4: OD stages SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft / generated artifacts into a project cwd; Cursor / Claude Code / Codex acts as the patch-applying code agent in that cwd. The handoff is already specified in §14.3; §21.5 below makes this the explicit v1 contract for "design → production code".

What v1 explicitly does not solve, listed once so it is unambiguous:

  • A native figma-extract / token-map atom pair (scenario 1).
  • A native code-import / rewrite-plan / patch-edit / diff-review chain plus build-test evaluator (scenario 2 and the patch side of scenario 4).
  • The §20.3 production-handoff contract end-to-end (scenario 4 native path).
  • Repo-aware multi-file diff orchestration with build evidence inside OD (scenario 4 native path).

21.3 Per-scenario gap analysis

21.3.1 Scenario 1: Figma migration (figma-migration)

What v1 already gives you for free:

  • The figma-migration taskKind is a first-class enum member in AppliedPluginSnapshot (§8.2.1), ArtifactManifest (§11.5.1), and the marketplace filters (§18 open question on top-level taskKind filter).
  • The recommended pipeline shape is locked: figma-extract → token-map → generate → critique (§1).
  • The active design system is injected into the prompt by the existing composeSystemPrompt() chain, so once token-map lands, "consistency with the chosen DESIGN.md" is a downstream effect, not new infrastructure.
  • The Figma OAuth flow already routes through the GenUI oauth-prompt surface kind with oauth.route='connector' once a Figma connector is registered (§10.3.1). Cross-conversation persistence is automatic via genui_surfaces (§10.3.3).
  • parentArtifactId chaining (§11.5.1) lets a migrated artifact become the seed for a follow-up tune-collab run without re-extracting.

What is missing for v1 native delivery:

  • figma-extract atom — extract Figma node tree, tokens, and assets from a Figma file URL through Figma REST. Spec reserves the id; implementation is out of v1 scope.
  • token-map atom — map the extracted tokens onto the active OD design system (design-systems/<id>/DESIGN.md). Spec reserves the id.
  • The Figma connector itself, if not already registered in apps/daemon/src/connectors/. (If yes, only the two atoms above are missing.)

Why this scenario is the easiest of the three "missing" ones to land:

  • The input boundary is well-defined: Figma file URL + OAuth token. No "arbitrary repository structure" to reason about.
  • The output boundary is HTML / artifact, not a real repo patch. Patch-safety is not on the critical path.
  • Critique can stay LLM-subjective in the first pass; objective evaluators (visual-diff against the original Figma export) can be added incrementally.

Suggested landing pattern: ship figma-extract + token-map as an out-of-tree plugin first (so it can iterate without blocking the daemon release cadence); promote them into first-party atoms once the Figma REST surface and the token-mapping heuristics stabilize.

21.3.2 Scenario 2: Existing-codebase refresh (code-migration)

What v1 already gives you for free:

  • The code-migration taskKind and the recommended pipeline shape code-import → design-extract → rewrite-plan → generate → diff-review are reserved.
  • ArtifactManifest already supports artifactKind: 'code-diff', renderKind: 'diff' | 'repo', and handoffKind: 'patch' (§11.5.1).
  • The tune-collab taskKind plus parentArtifactId chain is the right primitive for "first generate a candidate refresh, then iterate on the same artifact". v1 ships this primitive.

What is missing for v1 native delivery (everything in §20.3):

  • code-import atom — clone or read an existing repo, extract design-relevant structure (current component tree, current token usage, current routing model). Reserved id only.
  • design-extract atom — extract design tokens from source code / Figma / screenshots. Reserved id only.
  • rewrite-plan atom — long-running multi-file rewrite planning that fits §20.3's "Component mapping" + "Target stack contract". Reserved id only.
  • patch-edit atom — small-step file patches that respect the rewrite plan and surface parentArtifactId correctly. Reserved id only.
  • diff-review atom — render rewrite as a reviewable diff for user / agent review. Reserved id only.
  • build-test evaluator atom (§20.2) — run package-scoped build / typecheck / lint / test commands for code outputs; emit a critique signal. Reserved name only.

Why this is the hardest of the three "missing" scenarios:

  • Input is "arbitrary repo with arbitrary build/test config"; the agent cannot guess.
  • Output is a repo patch with build evidence; patch-safety is on the critical path.
  • The until signal for the devloop is "build + test pass + visual-diff threshold met", which couples three of the missing atoms.

v1 fallback (also documented in §21.5): instead of running this end-to-end inside OD, point users at the §14.3 headless pipeline — OD generates a html-prototype or implementation-plan artifact; Cursor / Claude Code applies the patch in the user's repo cwd and runs build/test. v1 does not block this workflow; it just does not own the patch-application step.

21.3.3 Scenario 3: 0→1 design (new-generation)

What v1 already gives you for free (this is the v1 native scenario):

  • All required atoms are already implemented: discovery-question-form, direction-picker, todo-write, live-artifact, media-image / media-video / media-audio, critique-theater. See §10 atom table.
  • The default reference pipeline discovery → plan → generate → critique matches the typical new-generation flow; plugins do not have to declare od.pipeline to get a working pipeline.
  • All four GenUI built-in surface kinds (form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt) target this scenario directly.
  • Live preview through live-artifact and the od files watch CLI primitive (§12) means hot reloading and CLI co-watching both work in v1.

Single optional improvement worth pulling forward:

  • §20.2 evaluator atoms — specifically visual-diff, responsive-check, accessibility-check, brand-consistency-check, screenshot-regression. v1 critique is critique-theater's 5-dimension LLM panel, which is subjective; the until condition critique.score>=4 is therefore subjective too. Lifting visual-diff and brand-consistency-check into Phase 2 of §16 is the highest-leverage change for "good-looking + design-system consistent" to scale across plugins, because it gives the devloop an objective convergence signal.

Status: v1 covers this scenario without further design work. Treat §20.2 promotion as an optional Phase 2 quality bar lift, not a blocking gap.

21.3.4 Scenario 4: Design → deliverable production code (tune-collab extended)

Reality check (§20.3 is explicit about this):

  • v1 caps handoffKind at 'design-only' | 'implementation-plan' | 'patch'. 'deployable-app' is reserved in ArtifactManifest (§11.5.1) but not implementable in v1 without the §20.3 contract.
  • The five §20.3 requirements (target stack contract, design-token mapping, component mapping, patch safety, delivery evidence) collectively assume scenario 2's atom chain is already in place — build-test, rewrite-plan, patch-edit, diff-review. Without scenario 2, scenario 4 cannot land natively.

v1 contract (lock this in, see §21.5):

  • "Design → production code" in v1 is a two-product handoff: OD owns the design substrate (SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft / generated artifacts staged into project cwd, plus od files-managed artifact bookkeeping); the user's existing code agent (Cursor / Claude Code / Codex / Gemini CLI) owns the actual repo patch in the user's repo cwd.
  • The handoff surface is the §14.3 headless pipeline plus od files read / od files watch for the code agent to consume artifacts inline.

Native v1 delivery requires:

  • Scenario 2 implemented end-to-end (everything in §21.3.2).
  • Plus repo-aware multi-file patch orchestration with build evidence captured inside OD (a meaningful step beyond §20.3 itself).
  • Plus a UI / CLI surface for "review the patch, apply or reject" that is not part of v1.

This scenario is therefore the largest gap between "what the spec describes" and "what v1 ships natively". Future spec patches should land §20.3 first, then the missing repo-aware orchestration, before claiming this scenario as native.

21.4 Suggested delivery sequence

The §16 phased plan stays as-is; this is a delta-only roadmap that maps the gaps in §21.3 onto incremental phases without restructuring the existing plan.

Order Phase Scope Why this order
1 §16 Phase 1 + Phase 2A (already planned) Land scenario 3 end-to-end exactly as written Validates the plugin-as-workflow-contract thesis on the cleanest scenario
2 §16 Phase 2A++ (small addition) Lift visual-diff and brand-consistency-check from §20.2 into Phase 2A Gives critique-theater's until condition an objective signal so scenarios 1, 2, 3 all converge on stronger criteria
3 §16 Phase 2B + Phase 3 (already planned) Marketplace deep UI + federated trust Unlocks third-party plugin distribution before any cross-product handoff is documented
4 New "Phase 6 — Figma migration native path" Implement figma-extract and token-map atoms; promote them into first-party once stable; ship the official figma-migration plugin Easiest of the three missing scenarios; bounded input/output; reuses GenUI OAuth + parentArtifactId chaining without new primitives
5 New "Phase 7 — Production handoff contract (§20.3 §21.3.2)" Implement code-import, design-extract, rewrite-plan, patch-edit, diff-review, build-test; freeze the target-stack contract; freeze the design-token mapping contract Addresses scenario 2 natively and unblocks scenario 4 native path
6 New "Phase 8 — Native production code delivery" Repo-aware multi-file patch orchestration inside OD; native "review and apply" surface; promote handoffKind: 'deployable-app' from reservation to implementation Closes scenario 4 natively; depends on Phase 7

Phases 6, 7, 8 are deliberately enumerated after the existing §16 Phase 5 (cloud deployment) so they do not interleave with the headless / Docker stabilization story. Their internal ordering is fixed: 7 must precede 8; 6 can run in parallel with 7 because the two scenarios share only parentArtifactId chaining, not atom implementations.

21.5 OD ↔ code-agent handoff as the v1 production-code path

Until Phases 6, 7, and 8 land, the production-code experience for users follows the §14.3 headless pipeline. This subsection lifts that pattern into a v1 contract so external code-agent integrations can rely on it without re-reading §14.3.

The contract has four locked points:

  1. OD stages the design substrate into a project cwd. Per §14.3, the daemon writes SKILL.md / DESIGN.md / craft into .od-skills/ and generated artifacts into the project cwd via od files. The cwd is discoverable via od project info <id> --json | jq -r .cwd.
  2. The user's code agent operates in that cwd or in their own repo cwd. OD does not run inside the IDE; it runs as a daemon next to the IDE. Cursor / Claude Code / Codex / Gemini CLI are the patch-applying surface.
  3. Bookkeeping stays in OD. ArtifactManifest (§11.5.1) records sourcePluginSnapshotId, sourceTaskKind: 'tune-collab' (or 'code-migration' once Phase 7 lands), and handoffKind: 'patch'; od files tracks every artifact byte. Even when the code agent does the patch, OD remains the audit log.
  4. Re-entry into OD is single-step. The user can reapply any plugin (or a different plugin) on top of the same project at any time via the inline rail (§8) or od plugin apply ... --project <id>. parentArtifactId chaining (§11.5.1) preserves the lineage across the OD ↔ code-agent boundary.

This is the answer to the user-level question "can I use this plugin system to deliver business code in v1?": yes, but the delivery is OD-substrate + external-code-agent-handoff, not OD-native one-click. Phase 8 (§21.4) is the path to native one-click delivery.

21.6 Reader contract

This section is the single source of truth for "what is shipped vs. what is reserved" across the four scenarios. When future spec patches add atoms, evaluators, or production-handoff primitives, the corresponding row in §21.1 and the per-scenario block in §21.3 must be updated in the same patch. Reviewers should reject any phase change that lands new atoms without updating §21 — this is how we keep the spec from drifting back into "everything sounds covered, nothing actually ships". §22 (third-party authorability) and §23 (self-hosting) carry the same update obligation for their own scopes; together the three sections form the spec's openness contract.

22. Authoring extension points: building uncovered scenarios on top of v1 substrate

§21 records what v1 ships natively. This section records the other half of the openness story: even though v1 only ships a complete native pipeline for scenario 3 (new-generation), a third-party plugin author can build runnable plugins for scenarios 1, 2, and 4 today, on the v1 substrate, without waiting for the Phase 6 / 7 / 8 native landings declared in §21.4. The two halves taken together — what OD ships natively (§21) plus what the substrate lets third parties build (§22) — answer the question "is the plugin system genuinely open?" with a concrete yes.

22.1 Substrate vs implementation

The distinction this section formalizes:

  • Substrate = the primitives the v1 spec hands to plugin authors: manifest fields, capability vocabulary, atom catalog, pipeline / devloop / GenUI / connector / MCP / od files / parentArtifactId / AppliedPluginSnapshot (§5–§11.5.1).
  • Implementation = which atoms are built into the daemon as one-line od.pipeline entries (§10).

A scenario is "v1 native" only when both substrate and implementation are present. A scenario is "v1 community-buildable" when the substrate is present and the implementation gap can be filled by a plugin author using the substrate's escape hatches. Scenarios 1, 2, and 4 are community-buildable today; the implementation gaps live in atom ergonomics, not capability gates.

22.2 Extension-point cookbook

What plugin authors actually reach for to fill missing first-party behavior:

Plugin author need v1 primitive that fills it Spec reference
Call a tool OD does not provide (Figma REST, AST parsing, SVG conversion, etc.) Bundle an MCP server in od.context.mcp[] §5 / §5.3 (mcp + subprocess + network)
Call a third-party API (Slack / Notion / GitHub / Figma / Drive) od.connectors.required[] riding the existing Composio subsystem §5 / §9 / §10.3.1 oauth.route='connector'
Operate on the user's real repo od project import <path> brings the repo into OD's project model; od files and agent file ops then work in-place §12 / §11.7 / §14.3
Run arbitrary build / test / lint / scripts bash / subprocess capabilities §5.3
Drive a third-party OAuth flow GenUI oauth-prompt surface, route connector or mcp §10.3.1
Custom HITL form / picker / confirmation GenUI form / choice / confirmation surface declaration §10.3
Don't pester the user across conversations / runs genui_surfaces table + persist: 'project' | 'conversation' | 'run' §10.3.3
Multi-stage flow with iterative convergence od.pipeline.stages[] + repeat: true + until §10.1 / §10.2
Carry artifact lineage ArtifactManifest.parentArtifactId + sourcePluginSnapshotId §11.5.1
Reproducible replay months later AppliedPluginSnapshot immutable + od plugin replay §8.2.1 / §12
Teach the agent a domain workflow SKILL.md body injected into prompt + od.context.assets[] reference materials §11.3 composeSystemPrompt()

Phrased as a rule: OD-native atom missing → plugin authors compose MCP server + bash + SKILL.md to substitute. The cost is ergonomics (each plugin re-invents its own naming and prompt fragments), not capability.

22.3 Worked examples

Three sketches of how a plugin author covers a "v1 not native" scenario today.

22.3.1 Figma migration without first-party figma-extract / token-map

Manifest sketch:

{
  "od": {
    "taskKind": "figma-migration",
    "context": {
      "designSystem": { "ref": "linear-clone" },
      "mcp": [
        { "name": "figma-rest", "command": "npx",
          "args": ["-y", "@community/figma-mcp"] }
      ]
    },
    "connectors": { "required": [{ "id": "figma", "tools": ["files.get"] }] },
    "genui": {
      "surfaces": [
        { "id": "figma-oauth", "kind": "oauth-prompt", "persist": "project",
          "oauth": { "route": "connector", "connectorId": "figma" } },
        { "id": "file-pick",   "kind": "form",         "persist": "conversation",
          "schema": { "type": "object",
            "properties": { "fileUrl": { "type": "string" } } } }
      ]
    },
    "pipeline": { "stages": [
      { "id": "discovery", "atoms": ["discovery-question-form"] },
      { "id": "extract",   "atoms": ["todo-write", "file-write"] },
      { "id": "generate",  "atoms": ["file-write", "live-artifact"] },
      { "id": "critique",  "atoms": ["critique-theater"],
        "repeat": true, "until": "critique.score>=4 || iterations>=3" }
    ]},
    "capabilities": ["prompt:inject", "fs:read", "fs:write", "mcp",
                     "subprocess", "network", "connector:figma"]
  }
}

The accompanying SKILL.md teaches the agent the procedure: "Figma URL in → call figma-rest.get_file → walk node tree → read DESIGN.md from active design system → emit HTML in cwd preserving Figma layout but rebinding tokens to DESIGN.md → live-artifact preview → critique loop." No first-party figma-extract or token-map needed; those atoms would only flatten the SKILL.md instructions into a reusable prompt fragment.

22.3.2 Existing-codebase refresh without first-party code-import / rewrite-plan / build-test

Pre-step the user runs: od project import /path/to/old-repo. Project cwd is now the real repo.

Manifest declares bash + subprocess + fs:write; SKILL.md guides the agent through:

  1. Scan files via the agent-native file-read; extract current tokens, component conventions, routing model.
  2. GenUI form surface to confirm target stack (Next/Vite/Remix, shadcn/MUI, package manager, test command).
  3. todo-write for a multi-file refactor plan.
  4. devloop stage with repeat: true: per iteration, file-edit a small batch → bash pnpm typecheck && pnpm test → encode build/test status into a critique-theater event whose score reflects pass/fail (5 = both pass, 1 = build fails). devloop terminates on critique.score>=4 || iterations>=8.
  5. Final critique-theater over visual + token consistency.

Two ergonomic gaps vs. native (Phase 7 in §21.4):

  • Build/test verdict is encoded into critique.score rather than its own until signal — works, but the run-log reader must know the convention.
  • No native diff-review UI; plugin uses a confirmation surface paired with raw diff text in the prompt.

Both gaps are fixed by Phase 7 promoting build-test and diff-review into first-party atoms with their own pipeline and surface semantics, plus the §22.4 limit-1 patch that opens until to atom-declared signals.

22.3.3 Design → production code via OD ↔ code-agent handoff

Plugin authors should not try to do the full handoff in v1. The right shape is:

  • Plugin produces artifactKind: 'code-diff' plus handoffKind: 'patch' artifacts in the project cwd.
  • Last stage emits a confirmation GenUI surface: "ready to apply? Open the project cwd in Cursor / Claude Code / Codex and run the included instructions."
  • od files retains audit; parentArtifactId chains the patch artifact to the design artifact.

This is exactly the §21.5 contract; the plugin author writes the SKILL.md that drives the agent toward producing handoff-shaped artifacts and stops short of running the patch inside OD.

22.4 Real substrate-level limits (plugin authors cannot work around these in v1)

These three are not ergonomics gaps — they are closed-vocabulary decisions in the v1 substrate and require future spec patches to lift:

  1. until signal vocabulary is closed (§10.1). Only critique.score, iterations, user.confirmed, preview.ok are accepted. A plugin needing build.passing, tests.passing, visual_diff.delta < 0.05, or any other custom convergence signal must encode it through critique.score (loss of clarity) or through a confirmation surface (loss of automation). Phase 7 (§21.4) and patch 1 in §23.3.1 jointly extend this vocabulary so atoms can declare named signals; until then, scenario 2's "build/test pass = converged" cannot be expressed natively.
  2. Atom registry is closed. od.pipeline.stages[*].atoms[] strings must resolve against §10's catalog (implemented + reserved). Plugin authors cannot register a new atom name. Workaround: ship the new capability as an MCP tool, attach it to the nearest generic atom (file-write / todo-write / critique-theater); the daemon-emitted pipeline_stage_started / pipeline_stage_completed events lose granularity for the new step.
  3. Core GenUI surface kinds are closed in v1 (§10.3.1). The product-owned renderer has only form / choice / confirmation / oauth-prompt as built-ins. Plugin authors who want side-by-side diff review, canvas annotation, 3D preview, or other high-fidelity UI must use the separate gated od.genui.surfaces[].component sandbox path when available; they cannot mint new built-in surface kinds or override the main renderer's styling contract.

The first limit hits scenario 2 hardest, the third hits scenario 4 hardest, the second affects everyone equally but is the easiest to work around via MCP.

22.5 Promotion path: out-of-tree → first-party

The recommended pattern for closing each gap, generalized from §21.3.1's Figma example into a rule for the entire roadmap:

  1. Out-of-tree plugin first. Plugin author publishes a community plugin doing the missing work via §22.2 escape hatches. Iteration cadence is independent of daemon releases.
  2. Stabilize the contract. Once the SKILL.md instructions, MCP tool surface, and pipeline shape stabilize, distill them into a candidate first-party atom contract: atom id, prompt fragment, tool gating, optional until signals, optional GenUI surface defaults.
  3. Promote into a first-party atom. Ship the atom under §10's catalog (move from (planned) to implemented), and ship the bundled scenario plugin (§23) that consumes the new atom. The promotion is transparent to the original plugin: it can either keep its SKILL.md path or switch to referencing the new atom name.
  4. Update §21 and §23. Per §21.6 the coverage matrix must be updated in the same patch that promotes the atom; per §23.6 any kernel-boundary change (e.g. extending until-signal vocabulary) must be reflected in §23.3 too.

This is how the spec stays honest: the absence of a first-party atom is never a permanent gap, it is a "pre-promotion" state of community work that has not been distilled yet.

23. Self-bootstrapping: OD's hard flow as first-party plugins

§22 establishes that third-party plugins can extend OD on the v1 substrate. This section establishes the symmetric property: OD's own hard-coded flow can be re-expressed as first-party plugins running on the same substrate, with no privileged path that third parties cannot reach. The plugin substrate is genuinely the floor; OD-the-product is just one configuration of it.

§10.2 originally foreshadowed this for atoms; the current implementation has now landed the entry slice. Bundled atom plugins exist under plugins/_official/atoms/**, bundled scenario plugins exist under plugins/_official/scenarios/**, and active stage blocks can be rendered from atom bodies. This section keeps the kernel/userspace boundary explicit and records what remains before the prompt and entrypoint selection are fully self-hosted.

23.1 Kernel/userspace boundary

Three categories cover everything OD does today:

Category Where it lives after self-hosting Examples from today's daemon
A. Userspace (movable to plugin) A first-party plugin's manifest + SKILL.md atom prompt fragments, default reference pipelines, atom-bundled MCP servers, critique scoring axes, discovery question wording
B. Kernel (must stay in daemon) apps/daemon/src/... snapshot SQLite writes, GenUI persistence + reuse, capability gate + tool-token issuance, devloop scheduler + until evaluator + ceiling, OAuth token storage, composeSystemPrompt() as assembler, project metadata block
C. Already plugin-driven in v1 Already in <daemonDataDir>/plugins/... or per-project plugin folders Active SKILL.md, DESIGN.md, craft .md, plugin-declared MCP servers, plugin-declared GenUI surfaces, plugin-declared pipelines

The category-B list is the kernel boundary: not "these things would be hard to plugin-ize", but "these things must stay in the daemon for security, persistence, or runtime-state reasons." A plugin runtime that lets plugins write applied_plugin_snapshots rows or issue connector tool tokens is a broken runtime.

The category-A list is what moves when the spec commits to self-bootstrapping. Most of it is apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts's string constants today.

23.2 What v1 already self-hosts (the easy half plus the first atom slices)

Category C is the half v1 has shipped, and the first pieces of category A have also moved. As of this spec:

  • The active SKILL.md, DESIGN.md, and craft .md files are loaded by apps/daemon/src/skills.ts / design-systems.ts / craft.ts, which §11.3 already refactors to delegate to apps/daemon/src/plugins/registry.ts. After Phase 1, every active behavioral artifact in the prompt is plugin-loaded, even if its content is bundled.
  • Plugin-declared MCP servers, connector requirements, GenUI surfaces, and od.pipeline.stages[] are all consumed via the same registry and resolver paths that a third-party plugin uses.
  • The active design system + craft injection that drives "consistency" in §1's product brief is already a plugin-substrate read: there is no privileged path for first-party DESIGN.md vs. third-party DESIGN.md.
  • First-party atom plugins under plugins/_official/atoms/** carry atom SKILL.md bodies and manifest metadata; packages/contracts/src/prompts/atom-block.ts renders active stage blocks from those bodies.
  • Bundled scenario plugins under plugins/_official/scenarios/** carry default pipeline shapes, including od-default for Home free-form routing and task shaping. packages/plugin-runtime/src/pipeline-fallback.ts resolves an applied pipeline through these bundled scenarios when a plugin omits od.pipeline.
  • @open-design/agui-adapter and /api/runs/:runId/agui provide external AG-UI event projection without changing OD's internal GenUI renderer.

This is why §22 holds: the substrate is already self-hosting for plugin artifacts, snapshots, GenUI declarations, pipeline declarations, bundled scenarios, and the first atom-body injection path. The remaining hard-coded parts are narrower and more product-shaped: the base OD designer/discovery prompt, some stage-entry selection logic, Home's curated scenario rail, and the closed signal / surface vocabularies listed in §22.4.

23.3 What v1 still hard-codes (the work to finish self-hosting)

The following patches finish lifting category A out of the daemon. Some have partially landed as entry slices, so read them as the completion checklist, not as a claim that nothing exists yet. Together they make the entire prompt + pipeline data-driven from plugin manifests; afterwards, composeSystemPrompt() becomes a pure assembler with no behavioral content of its own.

23.3.1 Patch 1 — Formal contract for od.kind: 'atom'

Today §5's od.kind enum lists 'atom' but never defines an atom plugin's shape. The patch:

  • An atom plugin is a folder with open-design.json (od.kind: 'atom') plus SKILL.md.
  • The SKILL.md body is the atom's prompt fragment, injected by the daemon assembler when a stage references the atom by id.
  • Optional od.context.mcp[] declares MCP tools the atom uses (e.g. live-artifact, connector).
  • Optional od.atom.untilSignals[] declares the named signal variables this atom emits, contributing to the until vocabulary in §10.1. This is how patch 1 also lifts §22.4's limit 1: each atom owns its own signals (e.g. build-test declares build.passing and tests.passing), and the until evaluator looks them up against the active stage's atoms instead of a hard-coded list.
  • Optional od.atom.toolGating[] declares which agent-side tools (file-read/write/edit, bash) the atom expects to be available.

23.3.2 Patch 2 — Finish migrating atom prompt fragments out of system.ts

Atom SKILL.md fragments and the active-stage block renderer now exist, but the migration is not complete. The remaining string constants in apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts (DISCOVERY_AND_PHILOSOPHY, the base official designer prompt, critique addenda, TodoWrite policy, file-ops policy, etc.) either move into plugins/_official/atoms/<atom>/SKILL.md or are explicitly reclassified as kernel-level assembly policy. composeSystemPrompt() resolves the active stage's atoms[], reads each atom plugin's SKILL.md fragment, and concatenates them in stage order under a stable header (## Active stage: <stage-id> followed by the atom fragments).

The migration is mechanical: every prose constant in system.ts has a one-to-one home under plugins/_official/atoms/<atom>/SKILL.md. Reviewers should reject migrations that leave behavioral prose constants behind in system.ts after the patch lands.

23.3.3 Patch 3 — Finish migrating default reference pipelines into bundled scenario plugins

Bundled scenario plugins and the pipeline fallback resolver now exist. The remaining work is to remove any product entrypoint that still hand-builds a default stage list instead of selecting a scenario plugin. The target remains: when od.pipeline is omitted, daemon/product code resolves a bundled scenario plugin per taskKind or explicit entrypoint route, then uses that scenario's od.pipeline.

  • plugins/_official/scenarios/od-new-generation/open-design.json
  • plugins/_official/scenarios/od-figma-migration/open-design.json (after Phase 6)
  • plugins/_official/scenarios/od-code-migration/open-design.json (after Phase 7)
  • plugins/_official/scenarios/od-tune-collab/open-design.json

Each ships only an od.pipeline and (optionally) some default od.genui.surfaces[] for that scenario. Daemon resolution becomes: "no od.pipeline provided + has taskKind → look up the bundled scenario plugin matching that taskKind → use its od.pipeline."

After this patch, replacing or forking od-new-generation is the canonical way to ship a different OD-flavor product.

23.3.4 Patch 4 — New bundled trust tier

Today §9 conflates "bundled with the daemon" and "from the official marketplace" both as trusted. The patch separates them:

Trust tier Source Capability prompt at install? Replaceable by marketplace upgrade? SQLite source_kind
bundled <repo-root>/plugins/_official/** No — capabilities granted by daemon-internal allowlist No — replaced only on daemon upgrade bundled
trusted First-party / explicitly-trusted marketplace No — auto-granted on install Yes — od plugin update may pull a newer version marketplace
restricted Anything else (GitHub URL, arbitrary marketplace, local folder) Yes — capability checklist required Yes github / url / local / marketplace

The bundled tier is what makes patches 2 and 3 safe: the daemon does not capability-prompt itself for capabilities it has always had, and a malicious marketplace plugin cannot impersonate a bundled atom by reusing its id.

23.3.5 Patch 5 — plugins/_official/ directory + first-run auto-install

Daemon startup adds a step:

  1. Walk <repo-root>/plugins/_official/** and register every plugin under installed_plugins.source_kind='bundled', trust='bundled', capabilities = the plugin's declared od.capabilities.
  2. Bundled plugins are not copied into <daemonDataDir>/plugins/; they live and reload from the repo path so daemon upgrades replace them in lockstep with daemon code.
  3. od plugin uninstall refuses to uninstall a bundled plugin (would break the daemon); od plugin update is a no-op for bundled.
  4. A user may install a trusted or restricted plugin with the same id as a bundled one; the user-installed copy wins for normal apply, but the daemon retains the bundled copy as a fallback for replays of older AppliedPluginSnapshot rows that pinned the bundled version.

23.4 The kernel after self-hosting: a pure assembler

After all five patches, apps/daemon/src/prompts/system.ts's composeSystemPrompt() is a pure assembler with this shape (sketched, not normative):

function composeSystemPrompt(input: PromptInput): string {
  const stack: string[] = [];
  stack.push(renderProjectMetadata(input.project));         // kernel-only
  stack.push(renderResolvedDesignSystem(input.context));    // already plugin-driven
  stack.push(renderResolvedCraft(input.context));           // already plugin-driven
  for (const stage of input.pipeline.stages) {
    stack.push(`## Active stage: ${stage.id}`);
    for (const atomId of stage.atoms) {
      const atom = registry.getAtomPlugin(atomId);          // bundled plugin
      stack.push(atom.skillFragment);                       // SKILL.md body
    }
  }
  stack.push(renderResolvedSkillBody(input.context));       // already plugin-driven
  stack.push(renderPluginInputs(input.appliedPlugin));      // already plugin-driven
  return stack.join('\n\n');
}

There is no behavioral content inside this function. All behavioral content lives under plugins/_official/... (for first-party) or under user-installed plugin folders (for third-party). The category-B kernel responsibilities (snapshot, GenUI persistence, capability gate, devloop, OAuth) are unaffected — they are runtime concerns, not prompt-composition concerns.

23.5 Why this matters for the product

Three concrete payoffs justify the patch sequence:

  1. Audit surface convergence. Every byte that enters the agent system prompt is reachable from a plugin manifest + SKILL.md. Reading plugins/_official/... gives a complete answer to "what is OD telling the agent to do today?"; no codebase grep needed.
  2. Replaceable taste. Enterprise deployments, vertical editions (real-estate / gaming / legal / financial-reporting), and partner integrations can ship their own plugins/_official/scenarios/od-<taskKind> without forking the daemon. The product taste — discovery questioning style, critique axes, default pipeline shape — becomes a content concern, not a code concern.
  3. First-party work runs the same path as third-party. When OD ships Phase 6 / 7 / 8 (§21.4), those scenarios land as first-party plugins inside plugins/_official/scenarios/, exercising the same loader, resolver, snapshot, and GenUI runtime that any community plugin uses. If first-party hits an ergonomics wall, third-party will hit it harder; this is the strongest dogfooding pressure available.

23.6 Relation to §21 and §22

Together the three sections answer "what is the plugin system, who can use it, and where does it stop?":

Section Question answered Audience
§21 What does OD ship natively in v1? Which scenarios are covered, partial, or post-v1? Maintainers planning the §16 phased rollout
§22 Without waiting for OD to ship more native atoms, how far can a third-party plugin author go on the v1 substrate? Plugin authors and integrators evaluating the platform
§23 Can OD's own hard-coded flow be re-expressed inside the plugin substrate? Where is the kernel boundary? Architects and reviewers ensuring no privileged backdoors

Future spec patches that add atoms, evaluators, scenarios, or kernel responsibilities must update the corresponding section in the same patch. §21 records what shipped, §22 records what's reachable from the outside, §23 records what's reachable from the inside; together they form the spec's openness contract.


End of spec. Review and refine inline. Confirm the plan and Phase 0 before any non-markdown changes land.