# Extracting a feature into a plugin

The runbook, written the day offscale became the first one. Follow it for music, then for the rest.

**Read first, in this order:**

1. `plugins/offscale/PLUGIN.md` — every decision and why, including the three that reversed
2. `plugins/example/` — the reference implementation, deliberately the smallest real plugin
3. `plugins/offscale/` — the worked example, all four parts
4. `plugins/music/PLUGIN.md` — the MESSY worked example: three pieces that stayed behind, and why each
   is a seam rather than a loose end. Read it if your feature has anything the platform also uses.
5. `src/servers/plugins/` — the system itself: `manifest`, `discover`, `mount`, `install`, `ecosystem`, `schema`, `generate`

---

## The rules. These are not preferences

**Every plugin route renders a Workspace with at least one panel.** A plugin contributes `web/panels.ts`
(`appRegistryMetas`, at least one) and `web/layout.ts` (`defaultLayout`); the shell renders
`WorkspaceView` around them. There is no way to export a component — a `web/` directory missing either
file is **refused at discovery, by name**. Non-compliance is unrepresentable, not forbidden.

**Every plugin permission is grantable, per role, at read or write.** No `kind`, no `ownerOnly`, no field
of any sort. The platform's answer is uniform; what a grant _means_ — whose rows a member sees, whether a
resource is shared or per-user — is the plugin's own job, in its own queries.

**Say `permissions`, never the other word.** It already means three things in this codebase.

**The manifest holds only what a directory listing cannot say.** Identity facts and human choices:
`publisher`, `version`, `platform`, `label`, `summary`, `icon`, `color`, `permissions`. Everything
structural is convention — presence is the declaration:

```
manifest.ts        required
api/router.ts      a backend router, mounted at mountPrefix()
db/schema.ts       tables, prefixed <app-name>_
sidecar/index.ts   a process (.mjs instead means node)
web/panels.ts      panels — REQUIRED with web/
web/layout.ts      layout — REQUIRED with web/
```

**A host binary is the one exception, and it goes in the manifest** — the tree cannot say it. Declare
`osDependencies` when your plugin shells out to something: the binary to probe on PATH, why it is needed,
and a package name per package manager. Absent means self-sufficient, which offscale and example are.
Music added the field; see its PLUGIN.md for what it is guarding against.

`appName` is the **directory name**. The sidecar runtime is the **file extension**.

**Nothing may branch on provenance** except `mountPrefix()`. First-party and third-party differing
anywhere else means two systems, and only one gets tested.

**Uninstall never destroys data.** The generated schema barrel follows plugin **directories**, not the
install table — `db:push` drops what it cannot see, so following installs would delete a plugin's tables
on uninstall. Only deleting a plugin's source can lose its data.

---

## The order that worked

1. **Map it first.** Sidecar, api router, db, frontend, and every line of platform wiring that names it.
2. **Move the backend**: `sidecar/` → `plugins/<name>/sidecar/`, `api/<name>/router.ts` →
   `plugins/<name>/api/router.ts` (export `router`, not `<name>Router`), `officer_db/src/<name>/*` →
   `plugins/<name>/db/`.
3. **Rewrite imports.** Platform code becomes `@@/…` (resolves from `plugins/` — verified). Queries take
   `officerdb/db` and `officerdb/crypto`. Schema takes `officerdb/auth/schema` — `users.id` is the one
   reference a plugin may make.
4. **Write `manifest.ts`.**
5. **Move the frontend** to `web/`, as `panels.ts` + `layout.ts`. Imports of platform UI become
   `officerdev` (the barrel exports `WorkspaceView`, `TerminalView`, `AppRegistryMeta`); `hooks/useClient`
   and `helpers/clipboard` stay as they are.
6. **Remove every trace from the platform**, and delete rather than comment out: `hono.ts` mount and
   import, the `capabilities/registry.ts` entry, `App.tsx` routes, `Screens/Dashboard/index.tsx`,
   `AppRegistry.tsx`, `officerdev/src/index.ts` re-exports, `Dock.tsx` tile, `usePageTitle.ts` rule, and
   **both** database barrels (`index.ts` and `schema.ts`).
7. **`bunx tsgo`** until clean. It finds the wiring you missed.
8. **Verify on the live server** — see below.
9. **Commit and push.** Message says what moved, what it found, and what is still open.

---

## Verification — run all of it

```
bun test                     # 757 pass, 10 pre-existing failures. Any 11th is yours
pm2 restart officer
```

Then through `/plugins`, watching PM2 and the browser at each step:

| Step                            | Expect                                                      |
| ------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| install                         | streamed log; schema applied; sidecar online; route mounted |
| the plugin's API                | answers                                                     |
| the plugin's screen             | renders as a Workspace                                      |
| dock                            | tile appears                                                |
| permissions page                | its permission is listed, read/write/none                   |
| disable                         | route 404s, sidecar stops, **tables and rows survive**      |
| enable                          | comes back                                                  |
| uninstall                       | route gone, `pm2 list` loses it, **data still there**       |
| `bun db:push` while uninstalled | `No changes detected` — data survives                       |
| install again                   | identical to the first install                              |

A normal refresh is enough; the shell is `no-store`. When the log's last line appears, the bundle exists.

---

## Traps, all of which cost real time once

- **Mount before starting the sidecar.** `createSidecarProxy` learns its port from a one-shot
  `<name>:server` event and subscribes when the router is first imported — at mount. Start first and the
  announcement fires into a void: online process, mounted routes, every request `503`. Already fixed in
  `install.ts`; do not reorder it.
- **`src/servers/sidecar/protocol.ts` still declares `<name>:server` per sidecar.** Music will need its
  line kept, or the union generalised to `` `${string}:server` `` — which is the better fix and is
  pending for the whole protocol.
- **`bunfig.toml` plugins do not reach `Bun.build()`.** Tailwind is passed explicitly in `generate.ts`.
- **The shell output is named for the entrypoint** (`index.gen.html`), and `naming` does not change it.
- **A stale generated file** (`Plugins.gen.tsx`, `plugin-schemas.gen.ts`) will fail the typecheck after a
  contract change. Regenerate rather than hand-edit.
- **Delete the feature's `app-store/catalogue.ts` entry, or its screen goes blank.** `capabilityAvailability`
  derives from `sidecar_installs`, and a plugin never gets a row there — its install state is
  `plugin_installs`. A leftover catalogue entry therefore makes the capability permanently `unavailable`,
  which puts its route into `deniedRoutes` and withholds the dock tile, on a server where the plugin is
  installed and healthy. This has now bitten twice: headscale (2026-08-14) and nearly music. The note in
  `catalogue.ts` is the one to read.
- **Moving a `*.test.ts` into `plugins/` used to stop it running, silently.** `[test] root` was `./src`
  until music; it is now `.`. If that ever goes back, every extraction quietly shrinks the suite. Compare
  the FILE COUNT across a run, not just pass/fail — that is the only thing that shows it.
- **A manifest is read once per server process.** Discovery does `await import(manifest.ts)`, and the
  module cache holds it for the lifetime of the process — so editing a manifest while developing changes
  nothing until `pm2 restart officer`. Costs ten minutes the first time, because the plugins page keeps
  cheerfully showing the old values. `outdated` cannot notice a version bump without a restart either.
- **A plugin importing platform code is fine (`@@/…`); the reverse is not.** If something in `src/` imports
  from your feature and cannot move — a widget, a relay — that piece stays, and the boundary goes around
  it. Find those before you plan the split; they decide it for you.

---

## Music is done. What it changed about this runbook

Extracted 2026-08-15 and verified live through the whole table above. `plugins/music/PLUGIN.md` is the
record; the parts worth carrying forward are already folded into the rules and traps above.

The one thing that generalises: **map what the PLATFORM still needs from your feature before you plan the
split.** Music's boundary was not chosen — it was dictated by two imports pointing the wrong way (a
dashboard widget reaching for `useMusicPlayer`, a cliamp relay reaching for `getMusicServerWsUrl`), and
both were found by reading the import graph rather than by reasoning about what music "is". Offscale had
none, so it came out whole and made the job look cleaner than it is.

The three pieces music left behind are `officerdev/src/MusicPlayer/`, `src/servers/api/music/router.ts`
and everything cliamp. Each is documented where it sits. **None of them is work waiting for you** — do
not tidy them into a plugin as a warm-up.

### The global-overlay question is answered, and the answer is no

Music was the first feature wanting to render on every route. It does not get to, and neither will the
next one: a shell slot for a plugin-provided component reopens "there is no way to export a component",
which is the rule the whole frontend contract rests on. `MusicPlayerHost` stays in `DashboardLayout`,
gated on its plugin's permission so it switches itself off with the plugin.

Reopen this only for a feature where the overlay is the whole product, and expect to argue for it.

---

## Which one next

No decision has been made. What the tree says, for whoever picks it:

- **`schema.ts` still lists eight commented plugin schemas** — email, notify, dav, photos, jellyfin,
  invoiceshelf, soulseek, vault, wallet. Each line names its tables and the file that defines them, which
  is exactly what its extraction needs.
- **`hono.ts` still has fifteen commented mounts.** Same list, roughly.
- **Soulseek is the interesting one**, and not because it is easy: `docs/navigation-audit.md` records its
  panels making 37 raw upstream calls, which is the mistake the offscale sidecar exists to avoid. Its
  extraction is a rewrite wearing a move's clothes. Say so up front rather than discovering it at 2am.
- **Email and wallet both hold credentials**, so they meet `secret-store` and `service_connections` in a
  way neither of the first two did. Read `docs/secret-store.md` first.

## Still open, platform-wide. Do not rediscover these

- **Websocket providers** — `server.reload({ routes })` proven, never called. No plugin owns a socket yet;
  music would have been the first and cliamp being out of scope is what let it pass.
- **`assertCapabilityTotality` reads the wrong list** — `Object.keys(handlers)` while Bun serves the route
  table, and plugin routes are not in `PROTECTED_API_PREFIXES` at all. It belongs in `buildHonoApp()`,
  now the single place routes are mounted. Security-adjacent; close it before members reach plugin routes.
  The live example is the two cliamp sockets: served in the route table, claimed by no capability, and
  invisible to the check. Pinned by a test in `registry.test.ts` so it stays a known fact.
- **Two dock sources** — the app store keeps its own catalogue; one when it is rebuilt on this
- **Offscale's queries scope by caller**, so a granted member sees their own empty list rather than the
  owner's. Its own job, not the platform's.
- **`protocol.ts` declares `<name>:server` per sidecar.** `music:server` and `headscale:server` are both
  still there for plugins that have left. Generalising the union to `` `${string}:server` `` is the fix.
- **`hasPersonalWrites` reads `c.personal` only**, so a plugin declaring the same thing through
  `readOnlyWrites` reports `false`. Nothing renders it, so it is dead on the wire.
