holocron/docs/adr/0018-repo-consumes-its-own-plugins-through-apm.md

This repo installs its own plugins through apm, not Claude Code's native plugin install

ADR-0015 moved plugin authoring to apm; ADR-0017 added the flat content mirror that keeps the authored .apm/ tree discoverable by hosts that install natively. Both are about producing the marketplace. This ADR is about consuming it: how the plugins get onto the machine this repo is worked on.

Status: executed (2026-08-14). All six packages are installed into /root/ai-development by apm install; the six native project-scope installs (claude plugin uninstall <name>@holocron --scope project) are gone and .claude/settings.json's enabledPlugins block is empty.

Context

Until now the repo consumed its own output the same way any user would: claude plugin install <name>@holocron, six plugins enabled per-project in .claude/settings.json, the holocron marketplace registered in ~/.claude/plugins/known_marketplaces.json with autoUpdate: true. That worked. It also meant the repo's dogfooding stopped one layer short of the tooling it publishes: kyberforge ships apm-workflow and apm-install skills describing an install path the repo itself did not take.

apm supports both scopes. apm install --global deploys to ~/.claude/; plain apm install deploys to the project. Global was rejected deliberately — the switch should be provable in one repo before it changes how every other project on the machine resolves its skills.

Decision

Root apm.yml declares all six packages under dependencies.apm, each as a git:/path: object against the holocron remote:

dependencies:
  apm:
    - git: git@git.dev.rkdr.net:Defame1297/holocron.git
      path: plugins/core

apm install deploys them to .claude/skills/<name>/ and .claude/agents/<name>.md.

Three sub-decisions inside that:

• Object form over the <name>@holocron marketplace alias. The alias is shorter and apm resolves it correctly (verified end-to-end against this remote), but it first requires apm marketplace add, which writes to ~/.apm/marketplaces.json — user scope, outside the repo, and absent on a fresh clone. The object form needs nothing beyond the committed manifest.
• Remote source over local path. apm accepts path: /root/ai-development/plugins/<name> as a local dependency, which would make the working tree live instantly. Rejected: it erases the distinction between editing a skill and shipping one, which is the entire point of having a marketplace. The remote form keeps the repo running the same released content every other consumer gets.
• Unpinned against the default branch. Parity with the autoUpdate: true the native install had. apm warns on every install (6 dependencies unpinned); accepted knowingly. Pinning is a per-entry ref: away once the repo tags releases per package — today git tag lists one tag total, so there is nothing meaningful to pin to.

Consequences

Skills lose their namespace. apm deploys plain project skills, so git:git-commits is now git-commits and kyberforge:skill-audit is skill-audit. This is not configurable — a project skill has no plugin to prefix. Every <plugin>:<skill> reference in the repo's own instructions was stale the moment the switch landed; AGENTS.md and CONTEXT.md are updated. The namespaced form still resolves for anyone installing holocron natively, so skill bodies written for both audiences should name the bare skill.

apm owns .claude/settings.json. (ADR-0019 supersedes the "exactly {"hooks": {}}" claim below — once a package ships a hook, apm merges it into that file and the merged entry is apm's own output. The rule that nothing repo-authored goes in the file is unchanged.) apm audit --ci replays the install into a scratch tree and diffs it against the worktree. apm's hook integrator writes that file, so the replay expects exactly what apm would have written — {"hooks": {}} — and any repo-owned key in it is permanent drift that fails the apm-audit-ci pre-push hook. Verified both directions: with the pre-existing enabledPlugins block present, 1 of 10 check(s) failed; reduced to {"hooks": {}}, All 10 check(s) passed. Nothing was lost in that reduction — enabledPlugins was empty after the native uninstall and the only hooks entry was an empty PreToolUse: [] — but it does mean the file is no longer available for repo-owned settings. Machine-specific settings go in the gitignored .claude/settings.local.json, which apm does not deploy; shared enforcement belongs in .pre-commit-config.yaml, where this repo already keeps it.

apm_modules/ breaks naive tree walks. apm materializes a full copy of every dependency there — including this repo's own plugins, .bats files and all. The dependency copies resolve their bats helpers relative to their own root, not this repo's, so tests/run-tests.sh went from 167 tests passing to 334 tests, 167 failures on the first install. Both discovery walks (tests/run-bats.sh, tests/run-tests.sh) now exclude apm_modules/, on the find side and on the git ls-files side that derives the expected set. Any future script that walks the repo tree needs the same exclusion.

Install output is gitignored; the lockfile is not. .claude/skills/, .claude/agents/, and apm_modules/ are regenerated by apm install. Committing the deployed skills would add a third mirror of content ADR-0017 already governs two copies of. apm.lock.yaml is committed — it is what makes the install reproducible, and apm audit --ci checks it.

MCP survived the switch; hooks were never at risk. apm read plugins/bin/.mcp.json as a self-defined direct-dependency MCP server and configured obsidian into the repo's .mcp.json unprompted. The gitea and context7 servers were never plugin-provided — they live in ~/.claude.json and are untouched. Every plugin's .apm/hooks/hooks.json is {"hooks": {}}, so apm's "contributed no entries to claude settings; skipped" warning on kyberforge and lint is accurate and harmless.

A .apm/ edit now needs a round trip. The dependency resolves from the remote, so an edit is invisible to the running session until it is pushed and the install is refreshed. Under the native install with autoUpdate the shape was the same; it was more noticeable here at first because the refresh is a manual step where marketplace auto-update was not — ADR-0019 automates it at SessionStart.

Correction (2026-08-14): the refresh command is apm update, not apm install. An earlier revision of this paragraph named apm install, which is wrong: apm install deploys from the pinned resolved_commit in apm.lock.yaml and does not re-resolve refs (apm install --force documents this explicitly — "does NOT refresh refs; use 'apm update' for that"). Running it after a merge redeploys the same content and reports success.

User scope is untouched, deliberately. bin@holocron, gitea@holocron, and a stale hello-world@holocron remain natively installed at user scope, and every project other than this one still resolves its skills that way. Converting them is a separate decision with a blast radius beyond this repo.

Alternatives considered

• apm install --global. Verified working in an isolated HOME: user-scope deploys land in ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.claude/agents/, and it is the only scope where a plugin's bin/ executables deploy (moot here — every bin/ in this repo is empty but for a README). Deferred, not rejected: it changes skill resolution for every project on the machine at once.
• Keeping both install paths. Rejected: the same skill would be present twice under two names, and .claude/settings.json cannot hold enabledPlugins without failing apm audit --ci.