Introducing Agent Plugins

Agent Plugins 1.0.0 has been released. Agent Plugins is an open, vendor-neutral standard for distributing plugins that extend AI agents, bundling Agent Skills and MCP servers into a single common format.

A plugin consists of a root plugin.json manifest and a defined directory structure.

• skills/: Storage and retrieval of Agent Skills
• mcp.json: MCP server configuration
• Client-specific extensions: Stored separately in namespace directories

The minimum required fields in the manifest are the specification version and the plugin name. Compatible clients first validate the root plugin.json, then independently validate and load Skills and MCP servers, so an invalid component does not disable other components.

Version 1.0 focuses exclusively on Agent Skills and MCP servers, which already have separate specifications and use cases. Other components such as commands, hooks, and agents are left to clients and may be added in the future if the need for portability and semantics sufficiently converge.

Client-specific features and files are supported through namespace extension mechanisms. This keeps the common format small and deterministic while allowing each client to freely design installation, deployment, policies, user experience, and unique features.

The project, proposed by Vercel, was jointly refined by representatives from AWS, Anysphere, GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel. The specification, JSON Schema, and guides for plugin authors and client implementers are available at agent-plugins.org.