Managing the HVE Core Plugin Manifest

Manifest Authority

Root plugin.json is the operational distribution definition for the one hve-core plugin and VSIX. Its agents, commands, rules, skills, and extensions arrays are deterministic repository-relative outputs of tracked path and license classification under .github. The manifest declares no hooks field.

Field	Lists	Included in
agents	Agent files (.agent.md)	Plugin and VSIX
commands	Prompt files (.prompt.md); empty, because HVE Core ships none and the Copilot harness does not load them	Plugin and VSIX
rules	Instruction files (.instructions.md)	Plugin and VSIX
skills	Distributable skill folders	Plugin and VSIX
extensions	Canvas extension package folders	Plugin only

.github/plugin/marketplace.json contains one hve-core entry with the relative source .. It owns locator metadata only and must not repeat component arrays or package policy. Because a fork keeps both plugin.json and this locator, it can serve as its own marketplace, as described in Distribute Your Fork.

Add Or Change A Component

1. Add canonical artifacts under .github/<kind>/<package>/.
2. Run npm run plugin:sync to derive root plugin.json from tracked .github paths.
3. Update docs/plugins/hve-core.md when user-visible capabilities or identity guidance changed.
4. Run the local-safe checks in Validation and Package Staging.

A manifest path maps directly to canonical source beneath .github. Do not add a fallback reader, duplicate membership list, copied plugin tree, or package recipe.

Closure And Channels

Manifest synchronization discovers every convention-matching tracked artifact. Plugin validation checks deterministic ordering, locator parity and containment, declared component coverage, and hooks.

The plugin has one registration, microsoft/hve-core, which tracks main. Stable and PreRelease are VS Code extension channels with the same components. They differ only in source ownership, cadence, version, and VS Code Marketplace channel behavior.

The VSIX carries the manifest's agents, instructions, and skills, without canvases. VS Code forwards the extension's agents and skills to Copilot sessions, but its instructions may not reach them, so use the plugin when you need every component.

Hooks

The plugin manifest declares no hooks. Hooks are not copied during repository adoption.

Validation and Package Staging

Ordinary validation reads canonical .github sources and never creates a repository-root plugins/ tree. Extension preparation reads the manifest's agents, commands, rules, and skills fields, writes them as the extension's chatAgents, chatPromptFiles, chatInstructions, and chatSkills contributions, and refreshes the single extension/package.json and extension/README.md. It ignores extensions. Packaging creates one VSIX.

Use these checks for package changes:

npm run plugin:sync
npm run plugin:validate
npm run docs:generate:check
npm run test:ps -- -TestPath scripts/tests/plugins/
npm run test:ps -- -TestPath scripts/tests/extension/

Repository Adoption

The installer resolves all components from root plugin.json and copies the complete manifest, because agents load skills and instructions by name and a partial set can leave an agent without what it needs. It converts repository-relative .github/... declarations to its component form without changing canonical target paths.

Schema version 2 records selection.profile and selection.components. New installs record the all profile. Installs from earlier versions may record custom with the components picked then. An upgrade copies every component the current manifest declares, and offers that full set in place of a recorded custom list, because agents preload skills that an earlier partial list can't include. File records track installed components without package identity.

The installer copies agents, instructions, and complete distributable skill directories into the target repository's .github folders while preserving source-relative paths, and Copilot discovers the copies there without settings. Copy HVE Core Into Your Repository walks through the installer.

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