Plugins

March 8, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Cartero discovers local plugin manifests from the plugins/ directory.

Plugin manifests describe trust boundaries and capabilities. First-party plugins in this repo also have corresponding Go command implementations that operate entirely on local workspace data by default.

Manifest schema

schema_version: v1
name: local-preview
version: 1.0.0
kind: renderer
mode: local-only
safe: true
capabilities:
  - preview.render
trust:
  level: first-party
  review_required: false
description: Writes previews into a local review sink.

Required fields

  • schema_version: currently must be v1
  • name: lowercase plugin identifier using letters, digits, and hyphens
  • version: semantic version such as 1.0.0
  • kind: renderer, content-pack, importer, exporter, or integration
  • mode: local-only, operator-review, or external-service
  • safe: whether the plugin stays within Cartero's safe local execution boundary
  • capabilities: one or more declared extension points
  • trust.level: first-party, reviewed, or unreviewed
  • trust.review_required: must be true for unreviewed or external-service plugins

Capability catalog

  • preview.render: render local previews or review artifacts
  • campaign.template: provide reusable campaign or landing-page content
  • campaign.import: ingest source content into Cartero campaign drafts
  • audience.sync: sync local or remote audience segment definitions
  • results.export: write operator or executive reporting outputs
  • events.ingest: collect reported-mailbox or training telemetry
  • webhook.deliver: emit signed campaign lifecycle events

Validation rules

  • capabilities must be compatible with the declared kind
  • safe: true is only valid for local-only and operator-review plugins
  • trust.review_required must stay true when safe: false, mode: external-service, or trust.level: unreviewed
  • invalid manifests are reported with field-level diagnostics during discovery and doctor

Goals

  • make available integrations visible to operators
  • keep the CLI offline-first and easy to audit
  • support future extension points without coupling the command layer to one transport

Usage

cartero plugin list
cartero plugin sync

Built-in plugins

  • local-preview: renders local previews and review output
  • template-library: seeds a curated local template pack into the embedded workspace store
  • clone-importer: converts reviewed .eml or raw message files into safe Cartero drafts
  • analytics-export: exports workspace analytics to JSON or CSV
  • audience-sync: imports local CSV segments into the embedded workspace store
  • engagement-recorder: stores non-sensitive engagement telemetry for reporting

Embedded workspace state

First-party plugins use the embedded SQLite workspace store at .cartero/cartero.sqlite. This replaces the old MongoDB-dependent model with a portable local database that needs no separate service, credentials, or runtime management.

Conformance workflow

  1. add a workspace fixture under internal/plugin/conformance/testdata/workspaces/<plugin-name>/plugins/
  2. capture the expected plain-text operator output in plugin-list.plain.golden
  3. register the fixture in internal/plugin/conformance/harness_test.go
  4. run go test ./... to execute manifest validation, fixture loading, and golden output checks

This workflow runs in CI through the normal Go test step, so new plugins inherit the same contract without extra pipeline wiring.