The smallest possible standard for AI agent plugins

What it does

Agent Plugins Specification 1.0.0 is a vendor-neutral contract for packaging AI agent extensions. It defines a portable directory structure—essentially a plugin.json manifest plus a skills/ folder containing SKILL.md files—that lets developers bundle agent skills or MCP servers into distributable plugins. The spec intentionally stops at the package boundary; it does not dictate how a host application loads, exposes, or executes those skills.

The interesting bit

The standard is aggressively minimal. A valid plugin can be two files deep and requires no build step, no container, and no vendor SDK. By leaving client behavior undefined, the spec avoids the trap of over-standardizing execution and focuses purely on discovery and packaging.

Key highlights

• Vendor-neutral format for both Agent Skills and MCP servers
• Minimal structure: a JSON manifest and Markdown skill definitions
• Published 1.0.0 specification with formal JSON schemas
• Client-agnostic: does not constrain how hosts integrate or run plugins
• Governed by a technical charter with documented future considerations

Verdict

Platform developers building agent frameworks should adopt or watch this if they want interoperability. If you are looking for a plugin runtime, SDK, or reference implementation, this is not it—it is strictly the packaging contract.