plugins: a splash is part of a plugin, like its icon

assets/splash.png is discovered by presence, published by the same copy that
already took the whole assets directory, and carried on DiscoveredPlugin beside
icon.

The platform draws no splash — a plugin has no launch. It is carried because the
plugin repository is where a product's artwork lives now, and the phone app that
fronts the same product needs somewhere to read it from that is not a designer's
folder. The pair is the point: the icon is a reduction of the splash's world,
and keeping them together is what stops them drifting.

Publishing no longer gates on the icon alone, which left a plugin shipping only
a splash serving nothing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/servers/app-store/assets.ts

@@ -32,6 +32,9 @@ export const assetPublicDir = (sidecarId: string): string => join(process.cwd(),
 /** The URL a manifest should use for a shipped icon. */
 export const iconUrl = (sidecarId: string): string => `/plugins/${sidecarId}/icon.png`;
 
+/** The URL for a shipped splash. Published by the same copy — `publishAssets` takes the whole dir. */
+export const splashUrl = (sidecarId: string): string => `/plugins/${sidecarId}/splash.png`;
+
 const exists = async (path: string): Promise<boolean> => {
   try {
     await stat(path);

src/servers/plugins/discover.ts

@@ -106,6 +106,9 @@ export async function loadPlugin(dir: string, appName: string): Promise<Discover
     // could only ever name a glyph the platform had already bundled, which is a ceiling a plugin
     // from a marketplace has no way to see coming.
     icon: fileOrNull(join(dir, 'assets', 'icon.png')),
+    // The launch scene, carried for whoever fronts this plugin on a phone. Same rule as the icon:
+    // the file's presence is the declaration, and there is no manifest field to keep in step.
+    splash: fileOrNull(join(dir, 'assets', 'splash.png')),
     api: fileOrNull(join(dir, 'api', 'router.ts')),
     schema: fileOrNull(join(dir, 'db', 'schema.ts')),
     sidecar: findSidecar(dir),

src/servers/plugins/install.ts

@@ -320,7 +320,9 @@ export async function installPlugin(
     // obvious: the `/plugins/*` route is dynamic precisely so a first install does not show a broken
     // image until the next restart, and uninstall is allowed to delete these because they are copies of
     // files that still exist in the plugin's source.
-    if (plugin.icon) {
+    // Either asset is reason enough to publish — the copy takes the whole directory, and gating on
+    // the icon alone left a plugin that ships only a splash serving nothing.
+    if (plugin.icon || plugin.splash) {
       await publishAssets(appName, plugin.dir);
       await step(steps, onStep, `assets: published to /plugins/${appName}/`);
     }

src/servers/plugins/manifest.ts

@@ -240,6 +240,18 @@ export type DiscoveredPlugin = {
    * naming one outside that set silently renders a neutral box.
    */
   icon: string | null;
+  /**
+   * `assets/splash.png` — the app's launch scene, published beside the icon.
+   *
+   * The platform itself draws no splash; a plugin has no launch. It is carried because the plugin
+   * repository is where a product's artwork lives now, and the mobile app that fronts the same
+   * product needs somewhere to read it from that is not a designer's folder. Presence is the
+   * declaration, exactly as with the icon.
+   *
+   * The pair is deliberate: `assets/icon.png` is a reduction of `assets/splash.png`'s world, and
+   * keeping them in one place is what stops the two drifting apart.
+   */
+  splash: string | null;
   /** `api/router.ts` — a backend router, mounted at `mountPrefix`. */
   api: string | null;
   /** `db/schema.ts` — tables, pushed on install. Every name must be prefixed `<appName>_`. */

src/servers/plugins/public-paths.test.ts

@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ const plugin = (appName: string, unauthenticatedPaths?: string[], publisher = 'o
       ...(unauthenticatedPaths ? { unauthenticatedPaths } : {}),
     },
     icon: null,
+    splash: null,
     api: null,
     schema: null,
     sidecar: null,