Plugins

Plugins extend GitCat with extra ⌘K commands, lifecycle hooks, panels, diff-highlighting languages, and Tama skins. This page is about using them; to write one, see the dedicated plugin authoring guide.

This page is being expanded

The full walkthrough is on its way. Here's the outline of what it covers.

What this page will cover

• The Plugins manager — open it from Tools ▸ Plugins… or ⌘K. It's a two-pane view: the installed plugins on the left, the selected one's details on the right (what it contributes, plus its enable and remove controls).
• Finding one — open Tools ▸ Plugins… and switch to the Browse tab: it reads the community gitcat-plugins index and can fetch a listed plugin for you. Installing from there still shows you every command the plugin runs before anything is installed, exactly like picking a file does — GitCat vouches for where the catalogue is, not for what is in it.
• Install from a file — plugins are local files; click Install from file… in the Plugins manager and pick the plugin's plugin.json file (downloaded from the index above, or your own), not its folder.
• Enable / disable a plugin with its toggle, or remove it (which unregisters it — the plugin.json on disk is left untouched).
• What a plugin can contribute — ⌘K commands, lifecycle hooks, declarative panels, diff-highlighting languages, a Tama skin, and Luau-scripted handlers.
• The trust boundary — GitCat never connects to anything itself; a plugin only runs the external commands (or sandboxed Luau) it declares. Install only plugins you trust.

Writing your own

The full manifest reference, the placeholder grammar, hooks, panels, languages, Tama skins, and Luau scripting all live in the plugin authoring guide.