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Core Plugins are a set of plugins that provide the standard application experience around the Arupa Kernel. They are ordinary plugins that use the same plugin contract as any other plugin. The Kernel does not require this specific set of plugins to load or run other plugins. Although they are optional from the Kernel’s perspective, Core Plugins often fulfill important application roles. They provide basic features, publish shared resources, and implement conventions that let other plugins cooperate without adding application-specific logic to the Kernel.

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What Core Plugins provide

Core Plugins commonly provide:
  • application infrastructure such as login, navigation, and plugin management;
  • shared frontend assets, theme resources, and browser-side helpers;
  • reusable application capabilities such as secret management;
  • implementations of the conventions used by other plugins.
Some Core Plugins act as providers for other plugins. For example, a provider can publish a resource URL or shared metadata, while consumer plugins discover it through the agreed convention. This keeps the Kernel focused on plugin loading, transport, authorization, and IPC.

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Conventions and replacement

Core Plugins are the current implementations of the conventions documented in kernel documentation. These conventions are recommended for plugins that want to integrate with the standard application experience, but they are not private Core Plugin APIs. Because the integration is defined by a convention, you can replace a Core Plugin or provide a custom implementation without changing the Kernel. The replacement must preserve the names, formats, metadata, URLs, or behavior that consumer plugins depend on. Use the Core Plugins documentation to understand the capabilities and conventions provided to the rest of the application. Use the Plugin Development Guide when you are building a plugin that runs on the Kernel.