platform/docs/offscale-plugin.md

Offscale — the first real plugin

Status: LIVE DOCUMENT, opened 2026-08-14. Decisions and findings from the session that started the plugin system. Correct it in place; it is meant to be edited, not archived.

Offscale is Headscale extracted into a plugin. It is the pilot: chosen because it is a genuine vertical slice (schema + backend router + sidecar + frontend screen + capabilities) without being pathological.

The name is not a rename. Offscale is Headscale plus the Companion — an API and UI that ship beside the Headscale server and add what Headscale itself does not do, the invite flow being the first of them. Calling it Headscale would undersell it and calling it a fork would be wrong: the server underneath is stock. The distinct name marks a distinct product, not a badge on someone else's.

Related, and older: sidecar-app-store.md is the origin design and is largely implemented despite its "Nothing implemented" header. sidecar-topology.md is where the runtime shape was going.

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The reframe

Core is officer and nothing else. Everything else is a plugin — officer-pty, officer-opencode, officer-claude-code, offscale. officer-anthropic-proxy is a known exception to think about later; the intuition is that it is one plugin requiring two sidecars.

The old baseline was six PM2 processes. Headscale was removed from it on 2026-08-14 (services.sh, the local ecosystem file, catalogue.test.ts's CORE[] mirror, and PM2 itself), so the machine this was written on runs five.

Two words, because "core" was doing two jobs

• baseline — what a fresh install actually runs
• first-party — what Officer Dev publishes

They come apart immediately: offscale is first-party and no longer baseline. Saying "core" for both makes "is X core?" a question with two answers.

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What a plugin is made of

Combined per plugin as needed. Only meta and the ID are always required.

• a meta object — id, name, dock item, backend/frontend mount, etc.
• an ID (see below)
• a sidecar
• a backend router and its routes
• a db schema
• default permissions per user group
• what it stores in the secret store, and whether that is per-user or plugin-global
• a frontend router, its routes, and the frontend code
• how it mounts into the file browser context menu
• a set of capabilities added to officer-items
• plugin settings page definitions
• an accompanying mobile app

A plugin is completely self-contained. The platform's installed/enabled state decides whether its routers mount, whether its sidecar is in the ecosystem file, and so on.

What offscale needs

db schema · backend router + routes · frontend router + routes · sidecar.

Not a context menu, not officer-items capabilities, and (probably) not a settings page.

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Identity and routing

The app-name is the ID. One identifier, not two — it names the plugin, prefixes its tables, and is its route. A random ID plus a separate app-name was considered and dropped: splitting the uniqueness guarantee across two namespaces means whichever is weaker becomes the real attack surface.

Uniqueness comes from two mechanisms, because one is not enough:

• globally — the marketplace owns the namespace for published names, with human review. A name as generic as notes gets refused: it is a name Officer Dev may want later.
• locally — the platform refuses to install a plugin whose app-name is already taken on this machine. Needed because a private plugin never asks the marketplace anything.

The marketplace works like the Chrome extension store. Anyone may write plugins for their own use with no restrictions; publishing is what invites review.

Mount prefixes

first-party   /api/<app-name>              e.g. /api/offscale
third-party   /api/p/<creator>/<app-name>  e.g. /api/p/alice/notes

p is a literal segment meaning "plugin". First-party plugins sit at the root because Officer Dev owns that namespace anyway, and because provenance is then legible at a glance in a log or a route table.

The prefix must be derived by exactly one function from the manifest. Nothing about a first-party plugin's code may know it is first-party. If that difference ever leaks past the one derivation — a special case in the router, a bypassed check, a different install branch — first-party and third-party become two systems, and only one of them gets tested.

/p/ does not solve plugin-vs-plugin collisions; the marketplace and the local check do. What it guarantees is that a plugin can never shadow a core route, which also means the platform can keep adding core routes forever without breaking installs.

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The database

Tables live in public, prefixed with the app-name — offscale_servers, exactly as the codebase already does (headscale_servers, music_favorites, vault_tokens). No new machinery.

A Postgres schema per plugin was tested and rejected

Not rejected on suspicion — it was built and proven to work, then dropped as more complexity than it earns. Recorded so nobody re-runs the experiment:

Property	Result
pgSchema('offscale') + drizzle-kit push creates the namespace	works
Cross-schema FK to public.users	works
Partial unique index preserved	works
Push is idempotent, no spurious re-creation	works
Cascade delete across the schema boundary	works
DROP SCHEMA offscale CASCADE as uninstall	works, public untouched

The finding worth keeping: schemaFilter is mandatory, and the docs are wrong. Drizzle's config documentation states that push "will by default manage all schemas". On drizzle-kit 0.31.8 that is false. A push with the table verifiably exported reported No changes detected and created nothing; naming the schema in schemaFilter made the identical push work.

If per-plugin schemas are ever revisited, that is the trap: a plugin install would report success and silently create no tables. Same failure shape as several bugs found the same day — a refusal wearing the costume of a normal result.

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Mounting — rebuild and swap, at runtime

Runtime mounting, no restart. This went round twice — C, then B on the belief that Hono could not mount at runtime, then back — so the reasoning is recorded rather than the conclusion alone.

What was actually tested

Router	app.route() after serving has begun
SmartRouter (Hono's default)	throws — Can not add a route since the matcher is already built
RegExpRouter	throws, same reason
TrieRouter	works
PatternRouter	works

So adding at runtime is possible, but only by giving up the fast matcher — and Hono has no API to remove a route, which uninstall needs.

The approach that solves both

Rebuild the whole app from the current plugin set and reassign the variable:

let app = buildApp(installedPlugins()); // core routes + one .route() per plugin
serve({ fetch: (req, server) => app.fetch(req, server) }); // closure, NOT app.fetch

// install:    app = buildApp([...installed, 'offscale'])
// uninstall:  app = buildApp(installed.filter(p => p !== 'offscale'))

The fetch closure reads app on every request, so reassigning it is the swap. Verified end to end:

no plugins    /offscale/x -> 404   | /core -> 200
installed     /offscale/x -> 200   | /core -> 200
uninstalled   /offscale/x -> 404   | /core -> 200

Better than the TrieRouter route on both counts: the default SmartRouter is kept, so the fast RegExpRouter path survives — and uninstall works, which an add-only API cannot express.

The one line that has to change

server.tsx:322 is '/api/*': honoServer.fetch — a bound method, evaluated once at serve(). It has to become (req, server) => honoServer.fetch(req, server), or reassigning the app has no effect at all. This is the whole mechanical cost.

Websockets are a separate table, and they reload

Six providers are declared in Bun's route table, not Hono's: /api/tasks/run/ws, /api/tasks/pipeline/ws, /api/terminal/ws, /api/chat/ws, /api/cliamp/ws, /api/cliamp/audio/ws. The Hono swap does not reach them — but server.reload({ routes }) does, in both directions:

before reload  /api/offscale/ws -> refused    | /core -> 200
after  reload  /api/offscale/ws -> CONNECTED  | /core -> 200
after  remove  /api/offscale/ws -> refused    | /core -> 200

So nothing needs a restart, for either table. A plugin owning a socket is possible from the start. reload wants the whole option set, so fetch is passed alongside routes.

[open] Whether connections already open across a reload survive it was not tested. Worth knowing before a plugin install can interrupt somebody's terminal.

The two tables remain two lists, which is the same seam as the totality bug below.

What this means for assertCapabilityTotality

It can no longer be only a boot check, because the mount set changes after boot. The question moves to per rebuild: buildApp() is the one place routes are mounted, so it is the one place to assert that every mounted route has a permission — and to refuse the swap if one does not. Same invariant, asserted where mounting actually happens instead of once at start-up.

Two things it must survive, both live today:

• The premise in sidecar-app-store.md that "every API route stays mounted regardless" is retired. An uninstalled plugin's routes are not mounted, so nothing can reach them.
• The check is currently fed the wrong list — Object.keys(handlers) from server.tsx, while Bun serves the route table, and the two diverged when plugins were switched off. Moving the assertion into buildApp() fixes this by construction for Hono routes, and leaves the websocket table as the part that still needs pointing at reality.

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Permissions

A plugin declares capabilities. A plugin may declare app, and nothing else.

CapabilityKind is core | app | confined | execution | admin. core means every account, not deniable, so a third-party manifest naming its own kind is a privilege-escalation surface: "malicious plugin declares itself core" is an ungated grant to every user. core, execution and admin stay the platform's to assign.

Three different things are called "capability" here

A manifest needs three names, not one:

1. capabilities/registry.ts — permissions (headscale, vpn)
2. $OFFICER_ROOT/capabilities/ — the file-based item store (skills, tools, tasks)
3. sidecar-registry capabilities: ['music'] — routing keys for sendCommand

Offscale needs (1) and (3), and not (2).

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Secrets

Two stores, and a plugin author will reach for the wrong one unless told:

• plugin-global keys → the secret store (officer_db/src/secret-store.ts, real: getKey(purpose), hasKey, retiredKeys). Purpose-keyed encryption and signing keys, not arbitrary values.
• per-user credentials → service_connections, which already does the hard part: the row is keyed (userId, service) and a NULL url means "inherit the instance", so a member structurally cannot see or supply the URL. service is free text with no namespacing yet — that needs solving before third parties touch it.

Offscale's own coupling is small and instructive. headscale/queries.ts imports exactly two things from the host:

import { db } from '../db'; // the connection
import { encryptSecret, decryptSecret } from '../crypto'; // at-rest encryption, 10 uses

A plugin cannot carry its own db (it must share the connection to reference users.id) and should not carry its own crypto (the key lives in the platform's store). So those two are provided to a plugin rather than imported by it. That is the first concrete piece of the plugin↔host API, and it fell out of the pilot rather than being invented.

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/api/vpn is being deleted

Officer had two headscale surfaces:

	/api/vpn	/api/headscale
capability	vpn, kind app — grantable to members	headscale, kind admin — owner only
purpose	enrol your own device	the tailnet: machines, routes, ACLs
surface	one route, POST /enroll	the whole admin API

POST /api/vpn/enroll was one-tap enrollment for a phone already signed into Officer. It has no caller anywhere. Verified against the mobile monorepo:

1. enrollVpn() has one call site, useVpnScreen.ts:617, inside enroll()
2. enroll() is reached only via if (embedded) await enroll()
3. embedded is optional and defaults to false
4. VpnScreen is rendered in exactly one place — apps/offscale/src/App.tsx — which never passes it

apps/mobile and apps/headscale have zero references to enrollVpn, VpnScreen or api/vpn. Neither does the Officer web app. The live database holds no vpn grants.

And it will never come back. Offscale is permanently standalone: no login, no backend calls, no dependency on Officer or the platform. The reasoning is the app's own and it is sound — the thing that gets you to the platform cannot itself need the platform, or a broken tailnet locks you out of both.

Everything collapses to one namespace

/api/offscale/*. The comment in vpn/router.ts claiming "the path is a contract" no longer binds: the contract has no counterparty.

The invite flow stays and does not need the mobile app changed. claimInvite calls ${invite.base}/api/v1/enroll/claim — the Companion on the server, at a base URL carried in the invite link. /api/v1/ is Headscale's own namespace. The phone never talks to Officer for invites.

• phone → Companion — untouched by anything here
• web admin → Officer → sidecar — ours to rename freely

There are THREE components, not two

Easy to miss, and worth stating because two of them contain the word "enroll":

Component	Repo	Enrolment surface
Officer platform	officerdev/platform	/api/offscale/* — web admin only
Mobile suite	officerdev/monorepo-mobile	calls the Companion, never Officer
Companion	officerdev/offscale-server	/api/v1/enroll/* under basePath /officer-api

The Companion ships beside each Headscale server. Confirmed against its source on 2026-08-14: zero references to /api/vpn/*, and its only outbound calls are the docker socket and its sibling headscale's /health. It never calls Officer and does not use /api/offscale/* either.

/api/v1/enroll/* is the Companion's and is not ours to collapse. The phone claims at ${invite.base}/api/v1/enroll/claim, where invite.base is the sidecarOrigin the Companion itself put in the invite (https://<domain>/officer-api).

Trap when deleting: do not delete the sidecar's enroll.ts. Line 71 dispatches /enroll/invites to handleInvitesRoute, so it is the invite flow's entry point. Only the bare POST /_officer/enroll handler below it is dead.

A public route is possible if ever needed. /api/vault is already exempt from platform auth (EXEMPT_API_PREFIXES) because Bitwarden clients carry a Vaultwarden bearer rather than a platform JWT. The exemption must be declared with a reason or the boot check refuses. Not needed today.

Not an open question — decided. Removing vpn leaves no member-grantable headscale surface, and that is correct. The invite flow supersedes it completely:

1. the Officer headscale app holds an admin API key for the Headscale server
2. from it the owner mints an invite — a URL pointing at the Companion
3. the Companion turns that into the redirect the phone app claims
4. the device joins

That path needs no per-member permission on Officer at all, and it is the one that exists and works. /api/vpn/enroll was the design it replaced, not a capability still waiting for a UI — there never was one. Do not reintroduce a member-facing enrolment route on the assumption something is missing.

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What headscale actually is — the inventory

Read end to end on 2026-08-14. This is what has to move.

Backend — 2,406 lines

/api/headscale is 18 lines: a pure createSidecarProxy, no Headscale knowledge, "must never grow app logic". Everything is in the sidecar under /_officer/*, dispatched by routes.ts to eight handlers — servers · nodes · users · keys · policy · enroll · ssh-test · companion.

Three things worth knowing before touching it:

• Every domain route acts on the active server, stored in Postgres behind a partial unique index and never passed as a parameter — so no client can act on a server the owner is not currently looking at.
• client.ts is a quirk-absorption layer, and that is the good part. The quirks are Headscale's: uint64 ids arrive as JSON strings (never round-trip through Number — it breaks above 2^53), 401/403 bodies are plain text while every other error is JSON, and the gateway uses DiscardUnknown so a misspelled request field makes the call succeed and do nothing — which is why mutations read the object back. One file containing all of it is the model for a plugin's client layer, not something to undo.
• The Companion is optional per server and answers {available:false, reason} at HTTP 200. The trick is distinguishing nginx's HTML 502 (no companion) from the companion's JSON 502 (docker op failed): it branches on whether the body parses.

Host dependencies: officerdb (db + crypto), DATA_PATH, officer-url.mjs, createSidecarConnector, createSidecarProxy, the anthropic proxy's state file, and the ssh binary.

Frontend — 29 files, 27 endpoints

Three registered panels (headscale-servers, headscale-nav, headscale-view, all availableOnPanel: false) inside a locked WorkspaceView, with headscale-view dispatching on useHeadscaleSection() to eight section views: Servers · Nodes · Users · Keys · Invites · Policy · Diagnostics · Console.

It follows the navigation conventions — no usePanelChannel anywhere, no opaque clicks, the section lives in :section and nowhere else. The one exception is documented and correct: choosing the active server is a DB write that re-scopes every query, so it stays a button rather than a URL.

The whole frontend↔host coupling, which becomes the plugin API:

Import	Why it matters
hooks/useClient → useClient, getHeaders	both, not just the client — useCompanionLogStream needs raw headers because EventSource cannot send Authorization
helpers/clipboard → copyToClipboard	carries the non-secure-context fallback; re-implementing it would silently regress
AppRegistryMeta	the panel-contribution contract
officerdev → WorkspaceView, LayoutNode	needs appTypes: {allowed, fallback} and locked
state/useDashboardState	per-user layout, backed by /api/dashboards, a core capability — stays host-provided
../Terminal/Terminal → TerminalView	the awkward one — a code dependency on another panel app

assist.ts travels, but stays unwired

The ACL-drafting assistant was written and never tested. Carry it into the plugin, do not delete it, and do not wire it up — it is there as a marker that the idea exists, to be finished or removed deliberately later. Do not tidy it away as unused code.

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The manifest — proposal

Written against offscale rather than invented in the abstract, on the principle that a field list designed from nothing includes what nothing needs and misses what is awkward. The field set grows per plugin; this is the floor, not the ceiling.

// plugins/offscale/manifest.ts
export const manifest = {
  /** Constant today. The one input to `mountPrefix()`, and the seam third parties hang off later. */
  publisher: 'officerdev',
  /** The plugin's own semver. Updates compare against this. */
  version: '1.0.0',
  /** Which platforms this build is good for. Refused at install when it does not match. */
  platform: '>=1.0.0 <2.0.0',

  label: 'Offscale',
  summary: 'Your tailnet — machines, users, pre-auth keys and access policy',
  icon: 'Network',
  color: '#818cf8',

  // Named `permissions`, NOT `capabilities`. That word already means three different things here — the
  // permission registry, the officer-items store, and the sidecar's routing keys — and a fourth would be
  // one too many. `permissions` is accurate and free: the old table of that name went in 044aacf4.
  permissions: [
    {
      key: 'offscale',
      label: 'Offscale',
      description: 'The tailnet: machines, routes and ACLs',
      /** Owner-only, or grantable to members. The whole distinction a plugin needs. */
      ownerOnly: true,
    },
  ],
} as const;

Everything the tree can say, the tree says

The manifest holds only what a directory listing genuinely cannot tell you: an identity fact, or something a human chose. Everything structural is convention, and presence is the declaration:

Path	Means
the directory name	appName — plugins/offscale/ is the id, so it cannot disagree with where the code sits
sidecar/index.ts	there is a sidecar; PM2 gets an entry. .mjs instead means node — see below
api/router.ts	there is a backend router, mounted at mountPrefix(manifest)
db/schema.ts	there are tables; pushed on install, every name prefixed offscale_
web/Router.tsx	there is a frontend; its default export mounts at <prefix>/*
web/panels.ts	it contributes panels; exports appRegistryMetas

The dock tile and the page title need no fields either — the tile is { label, icon, color, to: mountPrefix(manifest) } and the title is label, all of which are already above. Writing them again was duplication that could only ever drift.

The runtime is the file extension. sidecar/index.mjs runs under node, sidecar/index.ts under bun. Implicit, but it is the rule this repo already follows — officer-pty is pty/index.mjs under node because node-pty is a native module built against Node's ABI, and everything else is bun. Better than a field that can contradict the file it describes.

Install asks nothing, and that is the default

Offscale needs none of the install fields the current app-store catalogue carries — no modes, no existingFields, no configFields, no composeTemplate, no members. There is no Docker to provision and no external service to point at.

Its install is the whole of it: put the code there, push the schema, start the sidecar, swap the routes. Available immediately. Everything else is configuration the user does afterwards, inside the app — a Headscale server is registered at /offscale/servers and lands in offscale_servers, which is already how it works today.

So the rule is a plugin installs with no questions unless it says otherwise, and the prompting machinery (the three install shapes in sidecar-app-store.md) gets designed against the first extracted plugin that actually needs Docker or a remote instance. That was part of why offscale is the right pilot: it exercises the mounting, the schema and the sidecar without the install flow being a variable too.

Dropped from the first draft

• dependsOn — nothing read it and nothing enforced it. Both of offscale's dependencies already explain themselves where it matters (assistant_unavailable; "no SSH host configured"). A field whose only job is to be displayed, that nothing displays, is stale the first time anyone looks at it. Add it when something consumes it.
• kind — see below.
• sidecar / schema / frontend objects — all convention now.

[open] A plugin with a frontend that should NOT get a dock tile has no way to say so: web/ present means a tile. Fine for offscale; add a flag the first time something needs it.

admin has to be allowed, and the pilot proved it immediately

The earlier rule here was "a plugin may declare app, and nothing else". That is wrong, and offscale is the counterexample: its capability is kind: 'admin' — owner-only — and it should stay that way.

The distinction is direction. core means every account, undeniable, so a plugin claiming it grants itself to everyone: escalation. admin means owner only, which is a plugin restricting itself, and nothing is gained by forbidding it.

Corrected rule:

Kind	May a plugin declare it?	Why
app	yes	the ordinary grantable surface
admin	yes	self-restriction, never an escalation
core	no	every account, not deniable — an ungated grant to everyone
execution	no	runs as the owner's OS user; the platform's to assign
confined	no	implies a Linux identity the platform provisions

One function decides the prefix

publisher is the only input, so first-party and third-party cannot become two code paths:

const mountPrefix = (m: Manifest) =>
  m.publisher === 'officerdev' ? `/${m.appName}` : `/p/${m.publisher}/${m.appName}`;

Used for both /api/... and the frontend route. Nothing else in the codebase may branch on provenance.

Notes on the fields

• sidecar.runtime exists because officer-pty runs under node for node-pty's native ABI while everything else is bun. One plugin already needs it, so it is not speculative generality.
• platform is the compat range, and it presumes the platform gains a version. It has none today; 1.0 is expected before anyone outside Officer Dev writes a plugin.
• dependsOn is deliberately not enforced. Code dependencies need no declaration — a plugin builds inside the workspace, so import { TerminalView } simply resolves — and service dependencies already degrade. This is for the human reading the store.
• No health. Deferred; process-online is what the store knows and that is enough for now.
• No migrations. Deferred; a field can be added without redesign.
• No permission list. A plugin calls the API with the user's token and the user's permissions.

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The state of the app store, as found

It is the plugin system, roughly 90% built, with one structural hole.

ecosystem.config.cjs is generated once at setup and nothing appends to it on install, so the installer's final step runs pm2 start ecosystem.config.cjs --only officer-jellyfin, matches no app, and silently does nothing. Acknowledged in app-store/pm2.ts:23-29:

"Installing a plugin has to append its entry here before starting it — that is the plugin system's job and it is not built."

Net: nothing in the catalogue installs end-to-end today. Containers come up, service_connections is written, assets publish, the dock tile appears — and the sidecar never starts.

Also found:

• The schema install step is a logged no-op (effects.ts:117-124). Every table still ships via bun db:push.
• Of 8 entries declaring a compose template, only 2 exist on disk (transmission, vaultwarden). slskd has an icon and nothing else. catalogue.test.ts asserts a template name is declared but never that the directory exists.
• hono.ts has 28 routers mounted and 15 commented out; officer_db/src/schema.ts has 11 commented schema exports under "uncomment when the plugin is installed". Today, installing a plugin literally means editing two files and rebuilding.
• catalogue.test.ts asserts every entry's process has a matching src/servers/sidecar/<dir>. A plugin in its own repository has no such directory, so that test inverts — as sidecar-app-store.md predicted.
• A dead, unrelated plugin system still exists: GET /server-settings/plugins scans src/workspaces/plugins/, which does not exist, so it always returns []. PluginsSection.tsx still renders against it. Not to be confused with any of the above.

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Where the code lives

plugins/offscale on gitea.officer.dev — private, default branch main, topic officer-plugin.

The plugins org exists because Gitea has no nested organizations (verified: no parent field on the org object), so <owner>/<repo> is the only real namespace it has. Topics work and are searchable, and are used in addition rather than instead — they span orgs, which matters because browser extensions under extensions/ may become plugins later.

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Open questions

1. Frontend code is the hard one. Answered — see "How the frontend ships". Build to build/, rebuild on install, one generated Plugins.tsx, same origin. No federation, no import maps, no iframe: everything compiles together and a plugin changes what "everything" is. The developer builds inside a platform checkout, so dev-time and build-time are the same mechanism.
2. Migrations and versioning. A plugin needs a version and a platform-compatibility range, and something has to apply schema changes over time. Cheap now, miserable to retrofit.
3. Health, distinct from enabled. Deferred, deliberately. A sidecar can be online while the thing it exists to talk to is unreachable — offscale's own /servers/:id/health is exactly that question. But process-online covers the common failure, every plugin that needs more surfaces it in its own UI, and this is a manifest field that can be added later without redesign. Revisit in a distant future, not before.
4. No inter-plugin dependencies. Overtaken by evidence. That measurement was of schemas and is still true there; at runtime the pilot has two — assist → anthropic-proxy (service) and ConsoleView → TerminalView (code). The rule became "may depend, must degrade" — see "Dependencies between plugins". What is still open is the code kind: either TerminalView becomes host API, or the Console section does not travel with the plugin.
5. service_connections.service namespacing before third parties touch it.
6. officer-anthropic-proxy — one plugin, two sidecars.
7. Gitea is installed but invisible. Containers gitea and gitea-postgres run, officer-gitea is not in PM2, and there is no sidecar_installs row — it predates the store. "Already there, but not by us" needs an answer, and the store deliberately refuses to adopt directories it did not create.