Plugin Manifest (Plugin.toml)

Plugin Manifest (Plugin.toml)

Every Vox plugin ships a Plugin.toml in its install directory describing what the plugin is, what it provides, and what the host needs to know to load it. This page is the schema reference. For the design rationale see Plugin System Redesign (2026).

Common header

[plugin]
id = "<short-hyphenated-id>"
name = "<human-readable name>"
version = "<semver>"
description = "<one-line description>"
authors = ["..."]
license = "<SPDX identifier>"
homepage = "<url>"

[plugin.host]
min-vox-version = "<semver>"

Payload kinds

The [plugin.payload] block discriminates on kind:

• code — ships a cdylib per OS/arch and provides one or more code extension points.
• skill — ships a SKILL.md and registers MCP tools.
• composite — ships both.

Code payload

[plugin.payload]
kind = "code"
abi-version = 1

[plugin.payload.provides]
extension-points = ["MlBackend"]

[plugin.payload.requires]
os = ["windows", "linux"]
arch = ["x86_64"]
native-libs = [
    { name = "cudart", min-version = "12.0" },
    { name = "cublas" },
]

[plugin.payload.artifacts]
"windows-x86_64" = "vox_plugin_<id>.dll"
"linux-x86_64"   = "libvox_plugin_<id>.so"
"macos-aarch64"  = "libvox_plugin_<id>.dylib"

Skill payload

[plugin.payload]
kind = "skill"
format-version = 1
skill-md = "<filename>.skill.md"

[plugin.payload.tools]
exposes = ["vox_tool_one", "vox_tool_two"]

Composite payload

[plugin.payload]
kind = "composite"

[plugin.payload.code]
abi-version = 1
provides.extension-points = ["MeshDriver"]
artifacts."linux-x86_64" = "libvox_plugin_<id>.so"

[plugin.payload.skill]
format-version = 1
skill-md = "<filename>.skill.md"
tools.exposes = ["vox_tool_one"]

AgentSkills Compliance

Vox skill plugins implement the AgentSkills open standard, which allows them to be loaded by Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, JetBrains, and any other tool that follows the spec.

SKILL.md frontmatter schema

The AgentSkills spec requires two top-level fields: name (lowercase + hyphens, matches the directory short-id) and description. All Vox-specific fields live under a metadata block prefixed with vox-:

---
name = "skill-compiler"
description = "Compiles Vox source files and runs cargo check/build for the workspace."

[metadata]
"vox-id" = "vox.compiler"
"vox-version" = "0.1.0"
"vox-author" = "vox-team"
"vox-category" = "compiler"
"vox-tools" = ["vox_validate_file", "vox_run_tests", "vox_check_workspace"]
"vox-tags" = ["compile", "build", "cargo"]
"vox-permissions" = ["read_files", "shell_exec"]
---

Field mapping:

AgentSkills field	Vox usage
name	Spec-required; lowercase-hyphen id matching the plugin directory short-name (e.g. skill-compiler)
description	Spec-required; one-paragraph description shown in tool marketplaces
metadata.vox-id	Internal dot-notation id used by the Vox orchestrator bridge (e.g. vox.compiler)
metadata.vox-version	Semver version string
metadata.vox-author	Author or publisher identifier
metadata.vox-category	Primary skill category (see SkillCategory enum)
metadata.vox-tools	MCP tool IDs this skill exposes
metadata.vox-tags	Search tags
metadata.vox-permissions	Permissions required at install time

Parser compatibility

The vox-skills parser reads metadata.vox-* fields first, then falls back to the legacy top-level field names (id, version, author, etc.) for backward compatibility. This means older SKILL.md files continue to work without migration.

If neither metadata.vox-id nor the legacy id field is present, the parser derives the id from the name field.

CI enforcement

The vox ci agentskills-compliance guard runs on every PR and enforces the AgentSkills frontmatter contract for all *.skill.md files under crates/vox-plugin-*:

• Frontmatter block (--- … ---) must be present.
• name must be present, match ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,63}$, and equal the crate directory short-name (directory name with the vox-plugin- prefix stripped).
• description must be present and ≤ 1024 chars.

Run locally with:

vox ci agentskills-compliance

Validation

The manifest is parsed at host startup and validated against this schema. Failures are reported by vox plugin doctor with the offending field path.