Plugin Overview

Nexus ships with 21 built-in plugins organized into categories. Activate only the plugins you need — the engine handles dependency resolution and boot ordering automatically.

Plugin Categories

Category	Count	Purpose
Agents	4	Core reasoning loops — ReAct, Plan & Execute, Subagent, Orchestrator
LLM Providers	2	LLM API integration (Anthropic, OpenAI)
Tools	5	Capabilities the agent can invoke — shell, files, PDF, opener, ask user
Memory	2	Conversation persistence and context window compaction
I/O Interfaces	2	User interaction — terminal UI and browser-based UI
Observers	2	Event logging and thinking step persistence
Planners	2	Execution planning — LLM-generated or pre-configured
Skills	1	Skill discovery and management
System	1	Dynamic system prompt variables
Control	1	Cancellation coordination

Choosing Plugins

A minimal useful agent needs at least:

One I/O plugin — How the user interacts (nexus.io.tui or nexus.io.browser)
One LLM provider — Which AI model to use (nexus.llm.anthropic, nexus.llm.openai)
One agent — The reasoning strategy (nexus.agent.react is the most common)

Everything else is optional. Add tools to give the agent capabilities, memory to persist conversations, planners for complex task decomposition, and observers for debugging.

Common Combinations

Conversational Agent (no tools)

active:
  - nexus.io.tui
  - nexus.llm.anthropic
  - nexus.agent.react
  - nexus.memory.capped

Coding Assistant

active:
  - nexus.io.tui
  - nexus.llm.anthropic
  - nexus.agent.react
  - nexus.tool.shell
  - nexus.tool.file
  - nexus.control.hitl
  - nexus.skills
  - nexus.memory.capped

Planned Coding Workflow

active:
  - nexus.io.tui
  - nexus.llm.anthropic
  - nexus.agent.react
  - nexus.planner.dynamic
  - nexus.observe.thinking
  - nexus.tool.shell
  - nexus.tool.file
  - nexus.control.hitl
  - nexus.skills
  - nexus.memory.capped
  - nexus.memory.compaction

Multi-Agent Orchestration

active:
  - nexus.io.tui
  - nexus.llm.anthropic
  - nexus.agent.orchestrator
  - nexus.agent.subagent
  - nexus.agent.react
  - nexus.tool.shell
  - nexus.tool.file
  - nexus.memory.capped
  - nexus.control.cancel

Plugin Documentation Format

Each plugin page in this reference covers:

ID — The plugin identifier used in config
Purpose — What it does and when to use it
Configuration — All config options with types and defaults
Events — What it subscribes to and emits
Dependencies — Other plugins it requires
Usage examples — Config snippets and common patterns

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