Overview
`cursor/plugins` is a marketplace for adding agent capability in bounded units: discovery and manifests establish what a plugin declares; skills, rules, agents, hooks, and MCP shape behavior, lifecycle, and connections; trust then depends on identity, provider permissions, previews, confirmation, and observed effects. The series moves from repository contracts through loops and external action to portability and drift. Its value is calibrated inspection, not a safety guarantee: schemas and CI prove structural relationships, while hosts, providers, users, and live runs determine behavior and authorization.
Learning outcomes
- A valid marketplace entry and manifest establish structure, not runtime or provider trust.
- Skills, rules, agents, hooks, and MCP have different timing, authority, and failure surfaces.
- For consequential actions, previews, confirmation, provider scope, and external verification matter.
- CI and generated checks expose structural drift, while host and provider behavior still requires observation.
Keywords
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PlansFAQ
What does the `cursor/plugins` marketplace actually provide?
It provides selectable, composable plugin units that declare agent behavior, lifecycle work, or connections to external services. The package model makes those capabilities easier to locate and inspect without making them equivalent or automatically trustworthy.
Does a valid `cursor/plugins` manifest prove a plugin is safe to use?
No. It proves only structural relationships such as source, manifest shape, names, versions, and declared paths; runtime behavior, provider authorization, data handling, and action suitability need separate evidence.
How should someone inspect an external integration in `cursor/plugins`?
Inspect it from the marketplace entry and manifest through MCP transport and identity, provider scope, action state, confirmation, and external verification. The hosted runtime and provider remain the sources of current tools, permissions, and effects.
What is bounded composability in `cursor/plugins`?
It is the practice of adding selectable capability while keeping ownership, state, authority, and verification visible at each boundary. It improves inspection, but it does not guarantee safe autonomy or replace provider and human judgment.