Scaffold a new plugin

There are two ways to start a new plugin, and both scaffold from the same GitHub template: the formae plugin init command, or an AI assistant connected to the formae MCP. Whichever you pick, the tutorial then walks you through filling in the resource schema and CRUD operations.

CLI
AI assistant

formae plugin init scaffolds a complete plugin project: manifest, entry point, a stub ResourcePlugin, schema, conformance test setup, CI, and a Makefile.

Run the scaffolder

Interactively:

formae plugin init

It prompts for the plugin name, namespace, description, category, author, Go module path, license, and target directory, then downloads the template and generates the project. It also checks the hub for name availability and warns if your license is not on the hub’s allowlist.For automation or CI, pass everything as flags with --no-input:

formae plugin init \
  --name sftp \
  --namespace SFTP \
  --description "SFTP file management plugin for formae" \
  --author "Your Name" \
  --module-path github.com/your-org/formae-plugin-sftp \
  --license Apache-2.0 \
  --category data \
  --no-input

Run formae plugin init --help for the complete flag list.

Build and install

cd formae-plugin-sftp
make build
make install

make install places the binary, schema, and manifest under ~/.pel/formae/plugins/, where a local agent discovers it.

Implement the resource

The scaffold ships a stub that returns ErrNotImplemented for each CRUD method. The tutorial takes it from here: define the resource schema, then implement Create, Read, Update, Delete, and List with tests.

With the formae MCP plugin connected, ask the assistant to build a plugin for the technology you want to manage:

I want to create a formae plugin for cloudflare

This is what the MCP’s build_plugin prompt drives. The assistant works through the plugin SDK tutorial from start to finish:

Research the provider’s API to understand its resources and properties.
Scaffold the project with formae plugin init --no-input.
Follow the tutorial’s test-driven workflow to implement each CRUD operation.
Run make conformance-test to verify the plugin against a running agent.
Create a working example and update the README.

It references the shipped plugins (aws, azure, gcp, oci, ovh) as prior art. Because most of the code is generated, the tutorial doubles as the assistant’s playbook: keeping it accurate keeps generated plugins correct.

The assistant runs make install before conformance tests, since the tests run against the installed plugin binary rather than the source.

Get started

Guides

Concepts

Reference

Scaffold a new plugin

See also

​See also

See also