Plugin Best Practices
Practical guidance for stable, maintainable, and user-friendly plugins.
Good plugins are small, focused, and predictable.
Design for one job
Start with a single feature.
Avoid large multi-purpose plugins in the first version.
Keep startup light
Use on_app_start for UI injection and light initialization.
Push heavy work into background workers.
Assume every external dependency can fail.
Guard file access, hardware access, and parsing logic.
Clean up everything
If your plugin starts it, your plugin should stop it.
That includes threads, files, streams, and device connections.
Prefer visible feedback
A toast, dialog, or visible plugin action makes testing easier.
Users should know when a plugin actually did something.
Keep mutations reversible
If you modify score content, make the scope obvious.
If you modify UI state, keep the changes minimal and intentional.
Write for maintainability
keep function names descriptive
split UI code from business logic
avoid hidden side effects in hook functions
document unusual dependencies inside the plugin folder
Stability checklist
plugin does one thing well
plugin reports visible results
plugin permissions stay minimal
