Testing and publishing

The kryton-plugins repository is the development workspace for every official plugin and the staging area for community submissions. It ships with a build, test, and validate workflow you can lean on.

Test runner

vitest is the runner — it’s declared in kryton-plugins/package.json:

"devDependencies": {
  "esbuild": "^0.25.0",
  "jsdom": "^25.0.0",
  "typescript": "^5.9.0",
  "vitest": "^2.1.0"
}

Convention: each plugin keeps its tests inside its own __tests__/ folder, alongside manifest.json. Examples:

• plugins/checklist/__tests__/parser.test.js
• plugins/kanban/__tests__/board-model.test.js
• plugins/flashcards/__tests__/srs.test.js
• plugins/advanced-tables/__tests__/format.test.js

A vitest example

From plugins/checklist/__tests__/parser.test.js:

import { describe, it, expect } from 'vitest';
const { extractCheckboxes } = require('../parser.js');

describe('extractCheckboxes', () => {
  it('returns empty for note with no checkboxes', () => {
    expect(extractCheckboxes('plain text', 'a.md')).toEqual([]);
  });
  it('parses unchecked and checked items', () => {
    const md = '- [ ] todo\n- [x] done\n  - [X] indented';
    expect(extractCheckboxes(md, 'n.md')).toEqual([
      { path: 'n.md', line: 1, checked: false, text: 'todo' },
      { path: 'n.md', line: 2, checked: true, text: 'done' },
      { path: 'n.md', line: 3, checked: true, text: 'indented' },
    ]);
  });
});

The pattern across the repo: extract pure logic (parsers, model transforms, formatters) into a plain module the test imports directly, then drive UI from that module. Don’t test through the host — there’s no host in vitest.

Repo scripts

From kryton-plugins/package.json:

Script	What it runs
npm run build	node scripts/build-plugins.js — esbuild bundles each plugin’s TypeScript to JS.
npm run validate	node scripts/validate-registry.js — manifest sanity checks (see below).
npm run generate	node scripts/generate-registry.js — rebuilds registry.json from manifests.
npm test	node scripts/test-plugins.js && vitest run — per-plugin sanity tests, then the vitest suite.
npm run test:unit	vitest run — just the vitest suite.
npm run test:watch	vitest — watch mode for local dev.
npm run typecheck	tsc --noEmit.
npm run lint	eslint plugins/ --ext .js.

Manifest validation

scripts/validate-registry.js enforces:

1. Each plugin folder has a parseable manifest.json.
2. Required fields are present: id, name, version, description, author, minKrytonVersion.
3. manifest.id matches the directory name.
4. Declared entry points (server, client) exist on disk.
5. Settings entries are well-formed.
6. No two plugins share an id across the repo.

The script exits non-zero if any check fails; CI runs it on every PR.

Publishing to the registry

registry.json is auto-generated — generate-registry.js reads every plugins/*/manifest.json and rewrites the file. Don’t edit it by hand.

Workflow for a new community plugin:

1. Fork kryton-plugins.
2. Create plugins/<your-id>/ with the layout from the overview.
3. Locally: npm install && npm run validate && npm test && npm run build.
4. Run npm run generate so registry.json reflects your plugin.
5. Open a PR. CI re-runs validate, test, and build; reviewers check the plugin against the contribution guidelines in kryton-plugins/README.md.

Once merged, your plugin shows up in every Kryton instance’s Plugin Manager on the next registry refresh.

Local installation (no registry)

For development or private plugins you don’t want to publish: drop the folder into the running Kryton’s configured plugins directory, then reload from the admin panel. The lifecycle is exactly the same as a registry install — see Overview → Lifecycle.