Building plugins
Plugins are Corte's developer extension surface. They add contributions the editor treats as first-class: abilities for the AI editing agent, GPU effects, project templates, stock media, and model catalog entries. Users install them from the Marketplace tab of the Cuts page (user guide), and authors earn 70% of every sale in credits.
Start here: the open-source corte-plugins-marketplace repo — our eight first-party plugins with full source, the typed manifest contract, a drift-checking build, and a version-diffing batch publisher. Copy the plugin closest to what you're making.
What a plugin can add
| Contribution | Ships as | Where users see it |
|---|---|---|
| Agent tools | descriptor + sandboxed code bundle | The AI agent gains new abilities automatically |
| Effects | GLSL + declarative uniforms (pure data) | Inspector → Adjust, keyframable (Color & effects) |
| Project templates | pure data | The Cut tab's Templates view (Cut templates) |
| Stock media | pure data (https URLs you host) | The media panel's Stock tab |
| Models | pure data | Settings → Models (Choosing a model) |
Data contributions need no code at all — a manifest is a complete plugin. Only agent tools require a code bundle.
Two trust tiers
- Marketplace plugins (this guide): published as a versioned manifest (+ optional bundle), installed by users with explicit permission consent. Code runs in a sandboxed worker — no DOM, no app internals, no network unless the manifest requests it — and every editor call crosses a message boundary where the user's grants are enforced. Server-side, each install carries its own scoped, revocable token.
- Trusted, build-time packages: compiled into the app or an enterprise
tenant build (Embedding & white-label).
This tier additionally offers branding overrides and analysis-engine
replacement, and its
@eli/plugin-starterexample runs unsandboxed with a synchronous editor API. If that's what you need, talk to us.
The guide
- Authoring — the manifest contract, the sandbox API, shader effects, permissions, and the build.
- Publishing & operating — publish paths (UI, API, CI), versioning, pricing and earnings, private plugins, and the stats you get about your plugin in the wild.