Customization Model

Customization model

What a crickets customization is made of: the primitive kinds, and how plugins compose.

A crickets customization is a primitive — a skill, command, agent, hook, or snippet — described by a YAML manifest. Primitives that belong together live in one plugin, and the plugin is the unit you install. You author one primitive per file; its frontmatter says what kind it is and which hosts it runs on.

How it works

A primitive's kind field decides both what it does and where you author it — src/<group>/<kind-dir>/<name>. The generator discovers it by walking that subdir, and a per-group group.yaml describes the plugin around it. Five kinds ship today; the schema reserves six more (mcp-server, status-line, output-style, workflow, rule, settings-fragment) with no instance yet.

Kind	What it is
skill	an agent-invoked helper — the model triggers it on a context match.
command	a user-typed /slash command.
agent	a sub-agent for fan-out work.
hook	a script the host runs at a session event.
snippet	a standing instruction fragment.

Plugins compose two ways. A plugin requires: another when it hard-depends on it — it is then integrated, not standalone. A plugin enhances: another when it augments it only if both are installed: soft, and skipped when the target is absent.

How it fits

• Plugins — the unit primitives ship in. Each src/<group>/ is one plugin; group.yaml's requires: / enhances: are where one plugin's relationship to another is declared.
• Build & distribution — what reads these manifests. The generator switches on kind and supported_hosts to emit each plugin.
• Host adapters — where a primitive's supported_hosts + kind resolve to a real destination. The model declares intent; the adapter places the artifact.

See also

Detail:

• Customization types — the full primitive catalogue, kind by kind.
• Manifest schema — every frontmatter and group.yaml field, and when each is required.
• Add a skill · Add a plugin · Modify a plugin — the authoring how-tos.

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