holocron/docs/adr/0017-plugin-content-mirror-bridges-apm-to-host-discovery.md

# Plugin roots gain a compiled flat-directory mirror of `.apm/` content so Claude Code can discover it

This ADR is a follow-on correction to ADR-0015 (Microsoft APM replaces hand-authored
plugin/marketplace authoring), discovered during issue #90's post-execution review. It does not
restate ADR-0015's rationale for adopting `.apm/` as the authoring source of truth — see that ADR
for the parent decision. It resolves the one question ADR-0015's own execution flagged as open but
did not block on: whether Claude Code's installer can actually load content out of `.apm/`. It
could not.

**Status: executed (2026-08-13, issue #90).** `scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh` has been run
against all 6 plugins; flat `agents/`, `skills/`, `commands/` (etc., wherever `.apm/` populates
them), and a merged hooks file now exist at each plugin root as tracked, generated files. The
merged hooks file lands at `hooks/hooks.json`, not at the plugin root itself — see the second
amendment below, which corrects the path this ADR originally recorded.

## Context

ADR-0015's execution comment on issue #90 (2026-08-12) flagged, before merge: "it's currently
unverified whether Claude Code can actually discover any skill/agent content in these plugins...
This needs to be checked... before treating this conversion as functionally complete, not just
manifest-complete." That caveat did not block ADR-0015 from shipping "Status: executed" — the
manifest-compilation deliverable (`.claude-plugin/marketplace.json`/`plugin.json` generated from
`apm.yml` + `.apm/`) was genuinely complete, and every automated gate (`apm audit --ci`,
`claude plugin validate --strict` ×6, `apm marketplace check`) passed clean — so the ADR merged
with the caveat noted but unresolved.

The caveat turned out to be a real defect, not a formality. `claude plugin install` against all
three plugins tested (`git@holocron`, `gitea@holocron`, `kyberforge@holocron`) reported
`Skills (0) Agents (0) Hooks (0)`. Root cause, confirmed two independent ways:

1. **Claude Code's installer scans flat convention directories only.** `strings` on the installed
   `claude` binary finds zero references to `.apm/` or `apm.yml` anywhere. The installed plugin
   cache (`~/.claude/plugins/cache/holocron/kyberforge/1.3.1/`) mirrors the pre-conversion flat
   `skills/`/`agents/`/`hooks/` layout verbatim — that is what the installer actually copies and
   reads. `plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/claude-code-plugins/configuration.md`'s own
   "Plugin Directory Layout" table documents the same flat convention (`skills/<name>/SKILL.md`,
   `agents/`, `hooks/hooks.json`, all "at the plugin root, not inside `.claude-plugin/`") — this
   was accurate before ADR-0015 and never stopped being accurate; ADR-0015 moved plugin content
   without adding a bridge to it.
2. **apm's own manifest compiler has no `.apm/` → host-path bridge, by design.**
   `apm_cli/core/plugin_manifest.py`'s `build_plugin_manifest` docstring states directly:
   "Convention directories (`agents/`, `skills/`, `commands/`) are auto-discovered by the host, so
   they are never listed explicitly in the manifest." apm's Claude/Copilot compiler assumes plugin
   content already lives in those flat root-level directories; it has no model of `.apm/` nesting
   being host-visible at all, so it never emits anything that would point a host at `.apm/`.

Separately, `apm_cli/bundle/plugin_exporter.py`'s `export_plugin_bundle` (the engine behind
`apm pack --format plugin`) *does* implement the correct mapping — `.apm/agents` → `agents/`,
`.apm/skills` → `skills/` (subdirs preserved), `.apm/prompts` + `.apm/commands` → `commands/`
(`*.prompt.md` renamed to `*.md`), `.apm/instructions` → `instructions/`, `.apm/extensions` →
`extensions/`, and `.apm/hooks/*.json` merged into one `hooks.json`. But it was only ever wired to
produce a distributable bundle under `build/<name>-<version>/` — a path nothing in root
`apm.yml`'s per-package `marketplace.packages[].source:` fields (e.g. `./plugins/bin`) or
`marketplace.json`'s equivalent points at. The correct mapping existed in apm's own codebase the
whole time; it was simply never connected to the path this repo's marketplace actually installs
plugins from.

## Decision

Each plugin root gains a second, generated content category, produced by
`scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh` (wraps `apm pack --format plugin`, copies the resulting bundle's
`agents/`, `skills/`, `commands/`, `instructions/`, `extensions/`, and merged hooks file back to
the plugin root — the hooks file to `hooks/hooks.json`, per the second amendment below) — same
governance status as `.claude-plugin/plugin.json`/`marketplace.json`:
**compiled output of `.apm/`, never hand-edited.**

- `.apm/` remains the sole hand-edited authoring source, unchanged from ADR-0015.
- The flat mirror is what Claude Code's (and Copilot's) installer actually convention-scans at
  install time — it exists purely to satisfy the host's discovery contract, a contract apm's own
  manifest compiler deliberately does not bridge.
- `plugin.json`/`apm.lock.yaml`/`.mcp.json` from the bundle are excluded from the copy:
  `plugin.json` is already correctly generated by a separate, already-verified apm code path
  (`build_plugin_manifest`, run in the same `apm pack` invocation); `.mcp.json` is hand-authored
  at the plugin root per ADR-0015 and is not an `.apm/` primitive.
- Dev-fixture `tests/` directories are excluded too — they are dev-time fixtures no plugin host
  ever needs to discover, and several reference their own repo root through a hardcoded relative
  walk-up sized for `.apm/`-nested depth, so a copy one directory level shallower breaks the
  duplicate and double-runs the original under repo-wide bats discovery. The exclusion is
  **depth-scoped to `<category>/<name>/tests`**, deliberately: a skill may legitimately ship a
  directory literally named `tests` as a template asset it scaffolds *from*
  (`skills/skill-author/assets/templates/tests`, at depth 4). A depth-agnostic `-name tests`
  matched that too and stripped it, making the mirrored `new-skill.sh` die mid-run on
  `sed: can't read .../tests/README.md` — the scaffolder seds its way through the template tree
  file by file. Scaffolding assets survive; fixtures do not.
- Drift is enforced by a pre-push gate (`scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh --check --all`, wired into
  `.pre-commit-config.yaml` as hook id `check-plugin-content-sync` by a parallel workstream on
  issue #90) — the same enforcement model `check-manifests.sh` already applies to the other
  compiled-output category. `--check` alone is not the gate: the script requires either `--all` or
  an explicit list of plugin directories, and run bare it prints usage and exits 1.
- Verified two ways before landing: `claude plugin validate --strict` passes on all 6 real
  (non-scratch) plugin directories, and a live behavioral test
  (`claude --plugin-dir plugins/kyberforge -p "list your skills and agents"`) against the real
  committed directory confirms `kyberforge:*` skills and the `kyberforge:apm-orchestrate` agent
  are now actually discovered — they were not, before this fix.
- The stale root-level `plugins/<name>/plugin.json` files (a near-duplicate of
  `.claude-plugin/plugin.json` that nothing read or wrote, flagged separately in issue #90's
  review) were deleted across all 6 plugins as part of the same cleanup.

## Considered options

**Patch `plugin.json`'s content-pointer fields to point directly at `.apm/` paths (rejected).**
Claude Code's manifest schema documents these as legitimate override fields that accept custom
paths — `plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/claude-code-plugins/configuration.md` shows a real
example (`"skills": "./custom/skills/"`, `"agents": ["./custom/agents/reviewer.md"]`), so the host
side of this would work. Rejected because apm never emits such a pointer and would have to be
worked around on every run to make it do so.

Be precise about the mechanism, because an earlier revision of this ADR overstated it. apm 0.28.0's
`build_plugin_manifest` (`apm_cli/core/plugin_manifest.py`) does carry a strip loop, but its field
list is `("agents", "skills", "commands", "instructions")` — `hooks` is **not** in it, and
`instructions` **is**, which this ADR previously did not mention. More to the point, that loop can
never fire: the manifest it operates on comes from `synthesize_plugin_json_from_apm_yml`
(`apm_cli/deps/plugin_parser.py`), which only ever emits `name`, `version`, `description`,
`author`, `license`, `homepage`, `repository` and `keywords`. The pointer fields are absent from
apm's output because `apm.yml` has no schema for them, not because apm actively removes them — the
`pop` loop is defensive dead code against a manifest shape apm does not produce.

The rejection is unaffected by that correction, only its framing. Honoring this option would still
mean post-processing apm's compiled output on every `apm pack` run to add fields apm's schema has
no way to express, rather than reusing `plugin_exporter.py`'s bundle-export mapping, which already
does the right thing and only needed its output redirected to a path the installer reads. What it
is *not* is a fight against a load-bearing apm code path — the honest statement is that apm has no
input for these fields, and inventing one downstream is a workaround this ADR did not need.

**Point `marketplace.json`'s `source:` at `apm pack`'s `build/<name>-<version>/` output directly
(rejected).** Would reuse the bundle exporter's correct mapping without adding a new script.
Rejected: `build/` is a version-suffixed, regenerate-on-every-pack directory — pointing the
marketplace at it would mean either committing a moving-target build artifact to version control
(defeating the point of it being generated) or requiring every consumer's marketplace to run
`apm pack` before install, a build step Claude Code's installer has no hook for — it clones/fetches
source and scans directories; it does not execute a package manager's build command first.
Copying the relevant subset back to the stable `plugins/<name>/` path — where `marketplace.json`
already points — needed no change to the marketplace source model at all.

## Amendment (2026-08-13, revised 2026-08-14): Copilot's `plugin.json` gets an `mcpServers` *path*

PR #95's review (a follow-on to this same issue #90 workstream) found a second field apm's
compiler drops for the Copilot ecosystem: `build_plugin_manifest` runs
`manifest.pop("mcpServers", None)` on every Copilot-ecosystem `plugin.json`, its docstring stating
the field is "not part of the Copilot plugin manifest schema." That claim is contradicted by this
repo's own researched documentation —
`plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/github-copilot-plugins/configuration.md:49` documents
`mcpServers` as a valid, optional `plugin.json` field, typed **"string or object — MCP server
config path or inline definitions."**

This is not the same situation "Considered options" above rejected. There, apm emits no pointer
because its schema has no input for one and the host auto-discovers the directories anyway, so
nothing is missing. Here a field Copilot actually reads is actively removed on a premise that is
wrong against documented Copilot behavior, and there is no auto-discovery mechanism that makes it
redundant. Shipping the manifest as apm produces it would ship a manifest known to be incomplete.

`scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh`'s `reinject_mcp_servers()`, called from `sync_one()`, therefore
sets `mcpServers` on `.github/plugin/plugin.json` after `apm pack` runs — to the **string
`".mcp.json"`**, the path form of the documented type, not the resolved server objects. Only when
the plugin's `.mcp.json` declares at least one server, matching apm's own Claude-ecosystem builder,
which omits the field entirely rather than emitting `mcpServers: {}`.

**The payload is a path because an inlined object is a credential-leak path.** The original
implementation copied `.mcp.json`'s resolved `mcpServers` object into the manifest with `jq`. That
route bypasses apm's own `_sanitize_mcp_servers()` (`apm_cli/core/plugin_manifest.py`), which
strips credential keys and redacts secret values out of `.mcp.json` precisely because — in its own
words — "copying them verbatim into a committed `plugin.json` would exfiltrate them into the
distributed artefact." Today's `.mcp.json` files here carry no `env` block, so nothing leaked; the
first one that did would have written a live token into a tracked, published manifest, with the
sanitizer sitting one code path away and never invoked. A path reference cannot carry a secret at
all: the manifest names a file, and resolution happens in the host at load time. This also matches
apm's documented posture for MCP secrets — `microsoft-apm/configuration.md:96-98` requires `${VAR}`
indirection so secrets are "never committed to the manifest."

**Both modes re-inject**, not just real syncs: real mode writes into the plugin root directly,
`--check` into its throwaway copy first, so the manifest diff compares against the same content a
real sync would actually produce (see the script's own header). A check-mode re-injection is what
keeps `--check` from reporting permanent phantom drift on every plugin that ships an `.mcp.json`.

This remains scoped to one field found to be incorrectly dropped. It does not reopen the
content-pointer option rejected above: those fields stay absent because apm has no schema input for
them and the host needs no pointer, which is a different situation from a documented field being
actively removed.

Consequence: if a future apm release corrects the Copilot `mcpServers` omission, `reinject_mcp_servers()`
and its call site become dead code and should be deleted — nothing else in this ADR depends on the
reinjection existing beyond working around this specific upstream gap.

Line numbers are deliberately omitted above. An earlier revision of this amendment cited
`reinject_mcp_servers()` at line 190 and its call site at line 269; both had already moved by the
next review round of the same PR, and moved again with the edits recorded in the amendment below.
A function name is stable enough to grep for; a line number in an ADR is stale by the next commit.

## Amendment (2026-08-14): the merged hooks file lands at `hooks/hooks.json`, not the plugin root

As originally executed, `sync-plugin-content.sh` wrote the merged hooks file to
`plugins/<name>/hooks.json`. That path is scanned by nothing. Claude Code convention-scans
`hooks/hooks.json`, and the "Plugin Directory Layout" table this ADR's own root-cause analysis
quotes above says so:
`plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/docs/claude-code-plugins/configuration.md:100` is the row naming
`hooks/hooks.json`, six lines below the table's preamble at `:94` — "All content directories must
be at the plugin root, not inside `.claude-plugin/`". The two are not the same line; an earlier
revision of this amendment said they were. The implementation read the preamble's "at the plugin
root" and dropped the file there, without reading the row that names the path. So this ADR shipped
with the contract quoted correctly in its diagnosis and violated in its output — the flat mirror
bridged skills and agents into discovery and left hooks exactly as undiscoverable as before the
fix.

The merged file therefore moves to `plugins/<name>/hooks/hooks.json`. A root-level `hooks.json`
left over from a prior sync is stale output: a real sync deletes it, `--check` reports it as
drift. The real sync produced exactly these working-tree changes — `plugins/kyberforge/hooks.json`
and `plugins/lint/hooks.json` deleted, `plugins/kyberforge/hooks/hooks.json` and
`plugins/lint/hooks/hooks.json` created. Only those two plugins have an `.apm/hooks/` tree, so
only those two grow a mirrored hooks file at all.

This does **not** reopen the "patch `plugin.json` pointer fields" option rejected above. The move
needs no `hooks` pointer in `plugin.json`: `hooks/hooks.json` *is* the convention path, so the
host finds it by auto-discovery, exactly as it finds `skills/` and `agents/`. The rejection stands
for the reason it was made, once stated accurately — apm emits no pointer field for any of these,
because `apm.yml` has no key that produces one, and none is needed when content sits at the
convention path. (`hooks` was never in `build_plugin_manifest`'s strip list at all; see the
corrected mechanism note under "Considered options".) Writing to the convention path is what makes
the no-pointer premise true here rather than something to work around.

## Consequences

- Git now tracks real, visible duplication: `.apm/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` and
  `skills/<name>/SKILL.md` both exist and must match, likewise `.apm/agents/*.agent.md` vs.
  `agents/*.agent.md`, and `.apm/hooks/*.json` vs. the merged `hooks/hooks.json` (see the
  2026-08-14 amendment above for that path). This is an accepted
  tradeoff of bridging a gap apm itself doesn't close, not a bug — `.apm/` stays the single
  hand-edited source, and the drift gate (`check-plugin-content-sync`) is what keeps the mirror
  honest rather than trusting authors to remember to regenerate it by hand.
- `scripts/check-manifests.sh`'s existing blind spot (flagged in the same issue #90 review round:
  it validated `plugin.json` fields that ADR-0015 already stopped populating, so a plugin shipping
  zero content could pass it silently) is fixed as part of the same workstream: those field checks
  are removed (nothing to check — the fields are correctly absent by design), and the
  content-presence question they were standing in for is now answered by
  `check-plugin-content-sync`, not re-implemented inside `check-manifests.sh`.
- ADR-0015's "Status: executed" now carries a pointer to this ADR (see that ADR's Consequences)
  rather than being rewritten — the manifest-compilation half of its execution was correct and
  stands; this ADR fixes the second, previously-unverified half.
- `CONTEXT.md`'s "Plugin" and "Plugin marketplace" glossary entries are updated to describe the
  flat mirror as a second compiled-output category, alongside the existing
  `.claude-plugin/plugin.json`/`marketplace.json` description.
- A future apm release that ships a native `.apm/`-aware plugin.json compiler (closing this gap
  upstream) would let `sync-plugin-content.sh` and its drift gate be deleted outright — nothing in
  this ADR's decision depends on the flat mirror existing beyond satisfying the current installer's
  convention-scan contract.
- **Reproduction note (2026-08-13):** the live behavioral test cited in "Decision" above
  (`claude --plugin-dir plugins/kyberforge -p "list your skills and agents"`) is only a clean
  kyberforge-only signal when run from a working directory outside this repo. Run literally as
  written, from this repo's root, this repo's own project-level `.claude/settings.json` sets
  `enabledPlugins` to true for all 6 holocron plugins (kyberforge, git, gitea, core, lint, bin), so
  Claude Code loads all 6 plugins' skills/agents, not just kyberforge's — conflating kyberforge's
  discoverability with the other 5 plugins' already-enabled content. To isolate the signal, run
  from a neutral cwd outside `/root/ai-development` with an absolute `--plugin-dir` path, e.g.
  `cd /some/neutral/dir && claude --plugin-dir /root/ai-development/plugins/kyberforge -p "list your skills and agents"`.
- Reference: issue #90 (https://git.dev.rkdr.net/Defame1297/holocron/issues/90).