Getting Started

A five-step tour from zero to a packaged .dryadepkg. ~5 minutes if you have Python 3.11+ and uv already installed.

1. Install the CLI

uv tool install "dryade-plugins-sdk[cli]"

Verify:

dryade --version

If you do not have uv, install it first: uv installation guide.

pip install "dryade-plugins-sdk[cli]" works too — uv tool install is the recommended path because it isolates the CLI in its own venv.

2. Generate author keys

The CLI signs your plugin package with an Ed25519 dev key. Generate it once:

dryade plugin keygen

This writes ~/.dryade-author/dev-key.priv (mode 0o600) and ~/.dryade-author/dev-key.pub. The marketplace consumes the public half when you submit a plugin.

3. Scaffold a new plugin

dryade plugin new my_plugin --tier starter

You get a complete plugin directory:

my_plugin/
├── dryade.json           manifest v2.0
├── __init__.py           exports `plugin`
├── plugin.py             your Plugin Protocol implementation
├── pyproject.toml        Hatch build config
├── README.md             plugin docs
└── tests/
    └── test_plugin.py    7 meaningful tests (Plugin Protocol conformance,
                          manifest validation, lifecycle hooks)

4. Write + test your plugin

cd my_plugin
uv pip install -e ".[testing]"
pytest tests/

All 7 scaffolded tests should pass. Now edit plugin.py to add your behavior. The SDK ships test fixtures (from dryade_plugins_sdk.testing import FakeHost, MockKV, MockLLM) so you can pytest end-to-end without installing Dryade core.

5. Validate + package

dryade plugin validate
dryade plugin package

validate checks the manifest schema, plugin Protocol conformance, hash algorithm, and tier slot rules. package produces my_plugin-0.1.0.dryadepkg — a gzipped tar archive with the manifest, signed source hashes, and your Python files. Submit that to the marketplace or share directly with a Dryade install.

Next

• Concepts — what’s a Protocol, why type-safe, what’s contract v4.
• Examples — 5 reference plugins covering the most common patterns.
• Cookbook — recipes for HITL, MCP tools, multi-agent, KV, and UI.