Plugin Marketplace Guide

Try this to add instant expertise:

Install the AWS deployment plugin

Try this to discover community bundles:

Show me available plugins for React development

Plugins are community-curated bundles of agent templates, skills, and best practices. Install plugins to give your squad instant expertise in React, Azure, security, testing, and more.

What Are Plugins?

Your Squad can discover and install plugins — curated collections of agent templates, skills, and instructions from community repositories. Plugins solve recurring problems: Azure cloud development, React patterns, security hardening, testing strategies, and more.

What Are Plugins?

Plugins are community-curated bundles of reusable knowledge. Each plugin contains:

  • Agent templates — specialized role charters for common needs (e.g., “AWS DevOps”, “Python Data Science”)
  • Skills — reusable .ai-team/skills/SKILL.md files encoding patterns and best practices
  • Instructions — decisions.md snippets for conventions and routing rules
  • Sample prompts — ready-to-use prompts that activate plugin capabilities

A plugin marketplace is a repository that hosts these bundles. Squad ships with community marketplaces pre-configured. You can add your own.

Available Marketplaces

Marketplace URL What’s Inside
awesome-copilot github/awesome-copilot Frontend frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte), backend stacks (Node, Python, Go), deployment patterns
anthropic-skills anthropics/skills Claude-optimized patterns, prompt engineering, token efficiency, RAG patterns
azure-cloud-dev github/azure-cloud-development Azure VMs, App Service, Cosmos DB, DevOps with GitHub Actions, infrastructure-as-code
security-hardening github/security-hardening OWASP, input validation, secrets management, cryptography, compliance patterns

Commands

List registered marketplaces

> Show me available marketplaces

Squad displays all configured marketplaces with descriptions.

/plugin marketplace list

Same thing, command-line style.

Add a marketplace

> Add the awesome-copilot marketplace

Or use the command:

/plugin marketplace add github/awesome-copilot

Squad connects to the repository, indexes its plugins, and makes them available for browsing.

Remove a marketplace

> Remove the awesome-copilot marketplace

Or:

/plugin marketplace remove awesome-copilot

Removes the marketplace from your config. Installed plugins remain; new plugins can’t be added from it.

Browse plugins in a marketplace

> Browse the awesome-copilot marketplace

Squad displays all available plugins with one-line descriptions.

/plugin marketplace browse awesome-copilot

Same command-line version.

Search for a plugin

> Find a plugin for React testing

Squad searches all configured marketplaces for matching plugins and displays results with usage details.

Step-by-Step: Add the Awesome-Copilot Marketplace

Step 1: Add the marketplace

In your Squad session, say:

> Add the awesome-copilot marketplace

Squad connects to the repo and indexes all available plugins. You’ll see a confirmation:

✅ awesome-copilot marketplace added
📦 38 plugins indexed

Step 2: Browse available plugins

> Browse awesome-copilot

Squad shows a table of plugins:

Plugin Name              | Use Case | Install Command
-------------------------|----------|----------------
react-component-library | Frontend | /plugin install awesome-copilot/react-component-library
nextjs-fullstack        | Frontend | /plugin install awesome-copilot/nextjs-fullstack
fastapi-rest-api        | Backend  | /plugin install awesome-copilot/fastapi-rest-api
postgresql-migrations   | Database | /plugin install awesome-copilot/postgresql-migrations
[38 total plugins]

Step 3: Install a plugin

Pick one that matches your needs. For a React project:

> Install the react-component-library plugin

Or use the exact command:

/plugin install awesome-copilot/react-component-library

Squad:

  1. Downloads the plugin bundle
  2. Merges agent templates into your .ai-team/agents/ folder
  3. Adds skills to .ai-team/skills/
  4. Updates decisions.md with plugin conventions
  5. Seeds all relevant agents with plugin knowledge

You’ll see:

✅ react-component-library plugin installed
   ✓ Added React Component Design skill
   ✓ Added React Patterns decision (linting, naming, testing)
   ✓ Seeded 2 agents with React component expertise

Your agents immediately know the plugin conventions and use them in their next work session.

Step-by-Step: Onboard a New Team Member with Plugins

You’re adding a DevOps person to your Azure-heavy team. Instead of manually explaining your Azure setup, you use plugins.

Step 1: Create the new agent

In your Squad session:

> I need a DevOps person

Squad spawns a new agent and seeds them with your project context.

Step 2: Find Azure plugins

> Browse marketplaces for Azure plugins

Squad searches all configured marketplaces and shows:

Plugin Name               | Marketplace | Use Case
--------------------------|-------------|----------
azure-infrastructure      | azure-cloud-dev | VMs, Load Balancers, networking
azure-devops-pipelines    | azure-cloud-dev | GitHub Actions + ARM templates
azure-cosmos-setup        | azure-cloud-dev | Cosmos DB design and optimization
aks-deployment            | azure-cloud-dev | Kubernetes on Azure

Step 3: Install the relevant plugin for the DevOps agent

> Install the azure-infrastructure plugin for the DevOps agent

Or:

/plugin install azure-cloud-dev/azure-infrastructure --agent DevOps

Squad:

  1. Downloads the Azure infrastructure plugin
  2. Adds its skills and conventions to the DevOps agent’s history
  3. Adds infrastructure decisions to the shared decisions.md
  4. Seals the DevOps agent with Azure expertise on day 1

Your new DevOps person immediately understands:

  • Your Azure resource naming convention
  • How you structure ARM templates
  • Your monitoring and alerting patterns
  • Related decision history (why you chose certain regions, SKUs, etc.)

Step 4: Verify

> DevOps agent, what's your understanding of our infrastructure?

The DevOps agent summarizes Azure setup from the plugin without asking questions.

How Squad Uses Plugins During Team Member Creation

When you add a new agent, Squad can auto-recommend plugins:

> I'm adding someone for machine learning — they'll work with PyTorch and TensorFlow

Squad checks configured marketplaces for plugins matching “machine learning”, “PyTorch”, and “TensorFlow”:

🔍 Searching marketplaces...

Found 4 plugins:
  ✓ pytorch-training-pipeline (awesome-copilot)
  ✓ tensorflow-mlops (awesome-copilot)
  ✓ ml-data-validation (anthropic-skills)
  ✓ gpu-monitoring (azure-cloud-dev)

Install these plugins for the ML engineer?

You say yes, and the agent arrives with full expertise.

Advanced: Creating Your Own Plugin Marketplace

A plugin marketplace is just a GitHub repository with a specific structure:

my-team-plugins/
├── awesome-patterns/
│   ├── charter.md          # Agent template
│   ├── skills/
│   │   └── awesome-skill.md
│   └── decisions.md        # Conventions
├── microservices-template/
│   ├── charter.md
│   └── skills/
│       ├── service-discovery.md
│       └── fault-tolerance.md
└── README.md               # Plugin descriptions

Step 1: Create the repository

mkdir my-team-plugins
cd my-team-plugins
git init

Step 2: Add plugins

Create subdirectories for each plugin. Each should contain:

  • charter.md — a sample agent role
  • skills/ folder with .SKILL.md files
  • decisions.md — conventions the plugin enforces

Step 3: Add to Squad

> Add my-team-plugins marketplace

Or in config:

/plugin marketplace add github/my-org/my-team-plugins

Squad indexes all plugins and makes them available for install.

Sample Prompts

Browse and install in one go

Find a React plugin in awesome-copilot and install it for our Frontend agent.

Create a plugin template

Package our current React conventions into a plugin called react-best-practices.

Squad exports your relevant skills, decisions, and agent history into a reusable plugin bundle that you can share.

Search across marketplaces

Show me all database migration plugins across all marketplaces.

Recommend plugins based on my team

What plugins from awesome-copilot would help my Frontend + Backend + Tester team?

Update plugins

Check if any installed plugins have newer versions.

Squad compares your installed plugins against marketplace versions and suggests updates.

Troubleshooting

“Marketplace not found”

Symptom: Error: Could not connect to marketplace github/awesome-copilot

Fix:

  1. Verify the marketplace is public on GitHub
  2. Check your GitHub token has read access:
    gh auth status
  3. Verify the repository name is spelled correctly

“Plugin conflicts with existing agent”

Symptom: Installing a plugin tries to overwrite an existing agent.

Fix:

Squad won’t overwrite by default. Instead, it will:

  1. Ask which agent to merge the plugin into
  2. Or suggest creating a new agent (e.g., “ReactFrontend” if “Frontend” already exists)

You control the merge.

“Installed plugin isn’t being used”

Symptom: Agents don’t know the plugin conventions.

Fix:

  1. Verify the plugin was installed:

    > Show installed plugins

  2. Restart your Squad session so agents reload their history

  3. Check that decisions.md was updated:

    cat .ai-team/decisions.md | grep -i plugin-name

“Marketplace is too slow”

Symptom: Browsing or installing plugins takes 30+ seconds.

Fix:

  1. The marketplace repository is large. This is normal for the first browse.
  2. Squad caches marketplace index locally — subsequent browses are instant.
  3. To refresh the cache:
    > Refresh marketplace cache

See Also