Agent Plugins 1.0.0 is an open, vendor-neutral specification for packaging Agent Abilities and MCP servers into transportable plugins. It was revealed by a TSC of Core Maintainers from Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel. Google is becoming a member of that group as a Core Maintainer, represented by Kevin Hou, and we’re beginning to construct help into our personal merchandise.
You wrote a ability. You wrote a script or an MCP server to go together with your ability. Collectively they do one helpful factor properly — they know methods to question your reporting database and methods to flip the outcomes into the weekly abstract your crew truly reads.
Then you definately attempt to ship it to a second consumer.
The ability is okay. The MCP server is okay. However the wrapper round them will not be: the listing format is completely different, the manifest desires completely different top-level metadata, the MCP configuration makes use of a unique form and infers transports in a different way. So that you fork the bundle, preserve two copies of elements that have been by no means completely different within the first place, and watch them drift.
The core downside is not the elements. It is the manifest.
Agent Abilities already offers brokers reusable directions and sources. MCP already connects brokers to instruments and providers. Each are transportable on their very own. What has not been transportable is the field you set them in — and that field is the factor each consumer needed to invent for itself.
Plugin authors should not have to decide on between reaching each consumer and utilizing what makes every consumer good. They need to get each: one predictable construction for the components which can be genuinely the identical, and room for every consumer to maintain innovating on the components that are not.
For this reason we’re becoming a member of the Agent Plugins as core maintainers, and beginning to combine into our merchandise.
What an Agent Plugin Really Is
A plugin is a listing. That is the entire concept, and the restraint is the purpose.
reports-plugin/
├── plugin.json
├── abilities/
│ └── summarize/
│ ├── SKILL.md
│ ├── scripts/
│ └── references/
├── mcp.json
└── com.instance.consumer/Plain textual content
The manifest is 2 strains of substance:
{
"$schema": "https://agent-plugins.org/schemas/1.0.0/plugin.schema.json",
"identify": "reports-plugin"
}JSON
Every thing else is discovered at a hard and fast location. Abilities stay in abilities/, one subdirectory every, within the format the Agent Abilities specification already defines. MCP servers are declared in mcp.json, with an specific sort on each entry. A consumer by no means has to guess a transport from the form of a config object, it should work on stdio, Streamable HTTP, or legacy HTTP+SSE.
Discover what plugin.json can’t do. It can’t relocate elements, and it can’t declare them inline. There isn’t any discovery path to configure and no priority order to be taught. If abilities/ is not there, the consumer masses what’s there and strikes on. A mcp.json server that fails to begin does not take the plugin’s abilities down with it — the consumer skips that entry, retains loading, and experiences the failure. Impartial elements fail independently.
That final reverse-domain listing is the escape hatch. com.instance.consumer/ is an extension namespace owned totally by one consumer, for hooks, brokers, instructions, or anything that consumer desires so as to add. Purchasers that do not acknowledge it ignore it. The transportable core stays small as a result of the non-portable components have someplace professional to go.
Not Each ability needs to be a Plugin
Earlier than you attain for a plugin, ask whether or not you want one. In the event you’re delivery a single MCP server to a single consumer, mcp.json by itself continues to be the easier reply. When you’ve got a single ability, you don’t want a plugin. Agent Plugins earns its maintain when you could have elements that belong collectively and must journey collectively.
What It Intentionally Leaves Out
Agent Plugins v1 is a bundle format and nothing extra. It defines no set up mechanism, no distribution protocol, no permission mannequin, no sandboxing necessities, no belief or provenance verification, and no consumer expertise. These are named overtly within the mission’s future issues, not quietly omitted.
That is the suitable name. Set up, coverage, enterprise controls, and approval UX are fairly completely different throughout purchasers like an IDE, a CLI, and a managed enterprise platform. Every agentic utility has genuinely completely different obligations to their customers.
Plugins are a part of an ecosystem
Packaging is one job. Discovering and getting a plugin to a consumer is a unique job, and it is price being exact about which layer does what.
- Discover it — Agentic Useful resource Discovery. An open discovery protocol that lets a consumer ask “what is on the market for this process?” and get again matching sources. ARD already treats a Plugin as a first-class agentic useful resource sort, alongside brokers, MCP servers, and Abilities. It sits totally earlier than invocation.
- Describe it — AI Catalog. The entry format ARD indexes. A proposed change registers
utility/agent-plugins+jsonas a recognized sort, so a catalog entry can level at aplugin.jsonthe best way an current entry factors at an agent card ormcp.json. - Package deal it — Agent Plugins. One listing, mounted areas, transportable throughout purchasers.
- Run it — MCP and Agent Abilities. The execution contracts that have been already transportable.
Every layer is independently helpful and independently adoptable. You possibly can publish a plugin with no catalog entry, catalog a useful resource that is not a plugin, and run abilities with no plugin in any respect. Adopting one by no means obligates you to the following.
Delivery At this time
Two Google merchandise help the format as of right now.
Brokers CLI packages Google’s professional abilities for agent constructing, analysis, deployment, observability, and publishing, turning any AI coding agent — Antigravity, Gemini CLI, Claude Code, or Cursor — into an professional at agent constructing and agent ops. These abilities have been already distributable. Now they’re distributable in a format that is not ours alone.
Knowledge Agent Package supplies a set of plugins that carry the ability of Google Knowledge Cloud instantly into your most well-liked AI coding agent or IDE. Designed for knowledge engineers and builders, it permits brokers to seamlessly handle knowledge belongings, run queries, and deploy knowledge pipelines. By adopting the Agent Plugins commonplace, the Knowledge Agent Package ensures that its wealthy set of agentic abilities and MCP servers—connecting to BigQuery, Spanner, Cloud SQL, and extra—are portably obtainable throughout any suitable consumer.
We count on to carry Agent Plugins help to extra of our merchandise that already work with Abilities and MCP servers.
Get Began with Agent Plugins
Packaging is unglamorous infrastructure, and unglamorous infrastructure is strictly the sort of factor that needs to be shared relatively than reinvented 5 occasions. Agent Plugins is intentionally small in scope, does one factor properly, and is open and interoperable; that is why we’re backing it.
