Files
holocron/docs/adr/0015-apm-replaces-plugin-marketplace-authoring.md
Defame1297 f4bb1cf4e5 docs: finish reconciling the agent write fence across the toolchain
The previous round taught agent-audit's validator to permit disallowedTools but
left the skill that writes agents still forbidding it, in six places. Running
agent-author on any of the three fenced orchestrators would have stripped the
fence, and nothing would have caught it: the validator's allowlist is a permit
list, so an absent field passes. The template was the worst of them, since its
comment is copied verbatim into every new plugin-scope agent.

Where a list had to be restated it is now a pointer to field-inventory.md's
apm-agent-allowlist instead -- the same data validate.sh reads -- because a
roster copied into a template goes stale one step further out than the roster
itself. Where the text has to teach something it teaches the shape rule rather
than the exception: tools is an allowlist whose vocabulary differs per harness,
so verbatim copy makes one value wrong on one target; disallowedTools is a
denylist, where an unrecognised name denies nothing, so the worst case is a
missing fence rather than a wrongly granted capability.

ADR-0016's amendment claimed an unrecognised key is inert on Copilot while the
same ADR's Context says that behaviour is unconfirmed by research -- asserting
as settled the exact thing it flags as unknown, and justifying it with apm's
compile-time behaviour, which says nothing about Copilot's runtime. It is
rewritten into labelled tiers: confirmed for Claude Code with citations,
inferred by analogy for Copilot with the analogy's limits stated, unverified
where it is unverified, and the residual risk accepted explicitly with its
blast radius. It also no longer claims to restore a write sandbox: the denylist
does not deny Bash, which these agents inherit and legitimately need.

docs/hooks.md called the old root hooks.json a stale sync artifact -- it was
added in the plugin's creating commit and pointed at by main's Copilot manifest
-- and claimed both ecosystems now resolve hooks/hooks.json. Copilot does not:
its hooks field has no default and no compiled manifest declares one, so it
resolves nothing. Recorded as the gap it is, with re-injection noted as a
follow-up rather than asserted away. Its event list is marked partial.

Also: new-agent.bats asserted a hardcoded four-field allowlist and would have
rejected a scaffolded agent carrying the field the ADR now blesses; it reads
field-inventory.md too. And ADR-0016's premise that Claude's tools: is
space-separated was wrong -- it takes a comma-separated string or a YAML list.
The incompatibility with Copilot is the vocabulary, not the punctuation.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X7GvKuJfy2WrdBmUttV4DT
2026-08-14 12:30:30 +00:00

13 KiB

Microsoft APM replaces the hand-authored plugin/marketplace model as this repo's authoring source of truth

Status: executed (2026-08-12, issue #90). All six plugins now carry apm.yml + .apm/ as their authoring source; .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and every plugin's plugin.json are apm pack-compiled output. Supersedes ADR-0001 ("Skills are distributed via plugins... each plugin contains its own skills/ directory") — in effect.

This repo replaces its hand-maintained Claude Code plugin/marketplace authoring model (.claude-plugin/marketplace.json + per-plugin plugin.json) with Microsoft APM (apm.yml + .apm/) as the authoring source of truth — an outright replacement of the authoring layer, not an additive overlay. This ADR records the decision from a grill-with-docs session on issue #88.

Context

Every plugin under plugins/<name>/ currently ships two hand-maintained manifests (.claude-plugin/plugin.json for Claude Code, root plugin.json for Copilot CLI) plus a hand-maintained root .claude-plugin/marketplace.json listing all plugins. Adding a provider means hand-authoring a third manifest shape; keeping the two existing ones in parity is itself a tracked concern (ADR-0006).

Research on Microsoft APM (plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/microsoft-apm/) found that its documented "monorepo-hybrid" repo shape maps directly onto this repo's existing plugins/<name>/ layout: each plugin becomes its own apm.yml + .apm/{skills,agents,hooks,prompts,instructions}/ package, listed from a root apm.yml's marketplace: block. apm compile/apm pack generate per-target output — including a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json — from that vendor-neutral .apm/ tree, so provider manifests become compiled artifacts instead of hand-authored files, and new providers (Copilot, Gemini, Codex — all supported by apm runtime setup) no longer require a new hand-maintained manifest format.

Decision

  • The plugins/<name>/ monorepo-hybrid directory layout survives. .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and per-provider plugin.json files become compiled output via apm compile/apm pack, generated from apm.yml + .apm/ per plugin, extensible to other apm runtime-supported providers without hand-maintaining a separate manifest per provider.
  • This supersedes ADR-0001 ("Skills are distributed via plugins... each plugin contains its own skills/ directory"). Executed in issue #90: skills and agents physically moved to plugins/<name>/.apm/skills/ and plugins/<name>/.apm/agents/*.agent.md.
  • New operational tooling — apm-install (skill), apm-workflow (skill), apm-orchestrate (agent) — lands in kyberforge, tracked in issue #88 (https://git.dev.rkdr.net/Defame1297/holocron/issues/88).
  • Adapting skill-author/agent-author's routing to author .apm/-native content (retargeting to .apm/skills/, .apm/agents/ paths — the content these two skills author is still meaningful post-conversion) is deferred to issue #89 (https://git.dev.rkdr.net/Defame1297/holocron/issues/89). forge is out of scope for #89 — it stays untouched by this whole conversion effort and keeps routing to whatever the live author skills are at the time.
  • plugin-author/marketplace-author are not adapted — they are superseded and deleted. Unlike skill-author/agent-author, nothing in these two skills carries forward as authoring routing: apm compile/apm pack will generate .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and per-provider plugin.json directly from apm.yml + .apm/, so apm-install/apm-workflow/ apm-orchestrate (issue #88, already landed on this branch) fully replace what these two skills did. plugin-author/marketplace-author were deleted in issue #90's execution.
  • Translating the existing plugins into apm.yml + .apm/ and running the real conversion was executed under issue #90 (https://git.dev.rkdr.net/Defame1297/holocron/issues/90), which tracks that work through to merge.
  • CONTEXT.md's "Plugin"/"Plugin marketplace" glossary entries were rewritten in issue #90 to describe the compiled-output model directly, rather than carrying a forward-pointer to this ADR.

Considered options

Additive/compile-layer only, no apm.yml (rejected). Keep plugin.json/marketplace.json hand-authored and bolt APM on top as an optional extra. Rejected: doesn't achieve the multi-provider compile-reuse goal APM's package model provides, and leaves the existing dual-manifest hand maintenance in place unchanged.

New standalone plugins/apm/ plugin (rejected). plugins/lint/ was split out of kyberforge specifically because Vale tooling is generic and repo-agnostic, not holocron-marketplace-specific (see CONTEXT.md's "lint plugin" entry) — the same argument applies to a generic apm CLI wrapper. The shipped apm-install/apm-workflow skills are, in fact, generic, repo-agnostic APM CLI documentation with no holocron-specific content, so a standalone plugins/apm/ would have been a defensible split on artifact content alone. Rejected anyway, in favor of kyberforge, because holocron is currently the only repo that needs this tooling — standing up a separate plugin for a single consumer isn't worth it yet. Accepted as an explicit tradeoff (same pattern as ADR-0011's gitea-workflow naming tradeoff) — worth revisiting if this tooling is ever reused outside holocron's own conversion.

Content migration out of plugin-author/marketplace-author

A content audit of plugin-author/marketplace-author (same grill-with-docs session as this correction) sorted what they document into three buckets:

  • Claude Code platform constraints — carried forward. Facts that stay true regardless of authoring model (reserved plugin-name prefixes; the agents/-directory stray-.md-file validator gotcha, ADR-0010; claude plugin validate as a required terminal check) have been added into apm-workflow's reference docs, since compiled output still has to satisfy these constraints post-conversion.
  • Dual-manifest artifacts — obsolete, not carried forward. Conventions that existed only because of hand-authored dual manifests (ADR-0006's version-parity/patch-bump rule, the CC-vs-Copilot field-placement split, dual-file mirroring) are obsolete under apm.yml's single-manifest model and were deliberately dropped.
  • Holocron policy choice — resolved in #90. marketplace-author's catalog-version convention (minor bump for package add/remove, patch bump for field-only updates) isn't an APM mechanic — apm doesn't enforce it, and has no native version-bump automation at all — so rather than building a new script, the convention is now documented as guidance inside apm-workflow's reference docs (references/marketplace.md for the root catalog version rule, references/configure.md for the per-package version-bump-on-content-edit rule), applied manually by whoever edits apm.yml.

Consequences

  • ADR-0001 is superseded (issue #90).
  • ADR-0006 (plugin-version-parity) is moot (issue #90): plugin.json/marketplace.json are now compiled output of a single apm.yml, so there's no second hand-authored file left to keep in parity, and plugin-author — the skill that enforced ADR-0006 — was deleted rather than adapted (see "Content migration" above).
  • ADR-0010 (agent sources relocated outside agents dir) was updated (issue #90) for agents now living at plugins/<name>/.apm/agents/*.agent.md — the directory path changed; the pre-existing .agent.md extension convention (ADR-0005/ADR-0010) and project/user scope are unaffected, per ADR-0016.
  • ADR-0014 (Vale prefilter ships from the plugin) had its hardcoded plugins/<name>/skills/... paths (the Vale prefilter is skill-scoped only; ADR-0014 never referenced a plugins/<name>/agents/... path) updated for the .apm/ nesting as part of issue #90's execution.
  • kyberforge gained three new artifacts (issue #88) before any conversion of existing content happened, then lost two (plugin-author/marketplace-author, deleted once issue #90 verified parity) — net version bump 1.3.1 → 1.4.0. The root marketplace catalog bumped 0.3.1 → 0.3.2 to match.
  • ADR-0016 (a narrower decision discovered while designing issue #89) turned out to gate how issue #90 had to re-author plugin-scope agents: .apm/agents/*.agent.md compiles verbatim to both Claude and Copilot, so those files carry only the fields in the apm-agent-allowlist section of plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/agent-audit/references/field-inventory.md (as amended 2026-08-14: name/description/model/source_keys/disallowedTools) — existing dual-file <name>.md+<name>.agent.md pairs could not be raw-moved, only re-authored.
  • Two follow-up issues tracked the remaining work: #89 (skill-author/agent-author routing adaptation — closed, merged in #93) and #90 (the actual repo conversion, which also deleted plugin-author/marketplace-author — tracked through to merge; treat #90's own state as the authority on whether it has landed, not this line).
  • displayName is gone from all six compiled plugin.json files — accepted, not overlooked. apm.yml has no key that compiles to it: synthesize_plugin_json_from_apm_yml (apm_cli/deps/plugin_parser.py) emits only name, version, description, author, license, homepage, repository and keywords, and nothing in plugin_manifest.py adds displayName afterwards. So every plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json now carries author/description/homepage/keywords/license/name/repository/version (plus mcpServers for bin) and no displayName. The field is optional — plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/claude-code-plugins/api-reference.md:14 lists displayName as Required: No, "Human-readable name shown in plugin manager" — which is why claude plugin validate --strict still passes on all six. The visible cost is that the plugin manager falls back to the bare name as each plugin's label. Accepted as the price of apm.yml being the single authoring source: re-injecting displayName post-compile would mean a second reinject_* workaround of the kind ADR-0017's amendment reserves for fields apm strips on a factually wrong premise, and apm's premise here is simply that the key does not exist in its schema.
  • owner.email was dropped by mistake and has been restored (2026-08-14). An earlier revision of this ADR listed owner.email alongside displayName as a field apm.yml "has no key that compiles to." That was wrong. apm_cli/marketplace/yml_schema.py:186 defines _AUTHOR_OBJECT_KEYS = frozenset({"name", "email", "url"}), and an email: under root apm.yml's marketplace.owner block was empirically confirmed to compile straight through into .claude-plugin/marketplace.json's owner. The key is declared in root apm.yml again and the compiled owner block is {name, email, url}. Only displayName is a genuine schema gap; this one was a documentation error that removed working configuration.
  • mattpocock-skills is pinned to an exact version, and the pin is advanced by hand. Pre-conversion the entry was {"repo": "mattpocock/skills", "source": "github"} — an unpinned reference that tracked the upstream default branch, so consumers got whatever was on it at install time. The conversion first replaced that with version: "^1.2.0", which was still not a pin: a caret range has nothing to freeze it, because there is no lockfile for marketplace.packages[]. apm pack re-resolved the range against upstream on every run, so an upstream v1.2.4 would immediately invalidate the committed ref/sha and fail apm-pack-check-clean with exit 4 — blocking every push in the repo, triggered by a third party at an unrelated moment, with no local change to explain it. Root apm.yml therefore declares an exact version: "1.2.3", which apm pack freezes into .claude-plugin/marketplace.json as ref: v1.2.3 + an explicit sha. Two consequences, both intended: the committed ref/sha is genuinely reproducible and cannot move under the repo, and picking up a new upstream release is a deliberate act — a human edits the version: string in root apm.yml and re-runs apm pack. apm has no version-bump automation (established under "Versioning" in issue #90's plan), so an ageing pin is the accepted cost of a push gate that only fires on this repo's own changes. Note the pin does not make the entry offline-resolvable: an exact version still requires a git ls-remote, which is why two pre-push hooks need the network (see AGENTS.md).
  • Caveat on "Status: executed" above: issue #90's own execution comment flagged, before merge, that Claude Code's ability to actually load content out of .apm/ was unverified — that caveat turned out to be a real defect, not a formality: the native installer has zero awareness of .apm/ and reported Skills (0) Agents (0) Hooks (0) on every plugin installed from this marketplace. The manifest-compilation deliverable this ADR describes was genuinely complete; runtime discoverability was not. Fixed in ADR-0017 (a second, compiled flat-directory content mirror at each plugin root, generated by scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh) — see that ADR for the root cause and the fix.