Why say plugins are the new apps?

Because the installed product is moving from a human-operated interface to an agent-operated capability package. The plugin becomes the unit of distribution, governance, telemetry, and release management.

Is a Skill the same as a plugin?

No. A Skill is a capability. A plugin is the installable product that can contain Skills, connectors, tools, hooks, MCP config, commands, assets, agents, and policy.

Where does Telvine fit?

Telvine helps teams publish, instrument, evaluate, compare, and improve plugin versions without collecting prompts, file contents, connector payloads, tool arguments, or model outputs.

Category thesis

Plugins Are the New Apps

Apps gave people a way to install software. Plugins give agents a way to acquire governed capabilities. That shift changes what teams build, sell, deploy, measure, and improve.

Start with Telvine Read the plugin guide

Publish the product

Use Telvine when the plugin is ready to be treated like software.

The first useful milestone is simple: one plugin directory, one owner, one release record, and one measurement model.

npm i -g @telvine/cli
telvine login
telvine publish ./my-plugin

Why the app metaphor breaks

The old app model assumes a human opens a screen, clicks through a workflow, and decides what to do next. Agents do not work that way. They need callable capabilities, system access, instructions, permissions, and evidence that the capability worked.

A prompt library is not enough. A workflow script is not enough. The installable unit needs ownership, versioning, components, policy, telemetry, and a release path. That unit is the agent plugin.

What changes for builders

Plugin builders should stop treating each harness as a separate product. ChatGPT, Codex, Claude, Copilot Cowork, and other agent runtimes may need different adapters, but the commercial product is still one plugin.

Telvine keeps that product shape stable. It tracks the plugin, its components, its Skill behavior, its non-Skill component events, and the evidence used to promote a release.

Publish the plugin once as the managed product.
Map components to the harness package shape each runtime expects.
Measure every release with metadata-only events and eval evidence.
Promote the version that improves outcomes, not the version with the best demo.

What changes for buyers

Enterprise buyers and MSP clients need a cleaner way to reason about agent capability. Instead of approving scattered prompts and one-off automations, they can approve installable plugins with owners, components, versions, scopes, and telemetry.

That is the governance move. Control the installable product and the behavior it exposes.

Where it applies

Use cases that deserve a maintained plugin

MSPs

Package repeatable client know-how as plugins: onboarding, finance checks, service desk triage, compliance review, and reporting workflows.

Enterprise platform teams

Give departments a standard way to request, approve, deploy, monitor, and retire agent capabilities.

SaaS teams

Ship one plugin product across several agent harnesses, then compare release quality with telemetry and evals.

FAQ

Common questions

Why say plugins are the new apps?: Because the installed product is moving from a human-operated interface to an agent-operated capability package. The plugin becomes the unit of distribution, governance, telemetry, and release management.
Is a Skill the same as a plugin?: No. A Skill is a capability. A plugin is the installable product that can contain Skills, connectors, tools, hooks, MCP config, commands, assets, agents, and policy.
Where does Telvine fit?: Telvine helps teams publish, instrument, evaluate, compare, and improve plugin versions without collecting prompts, file contents, connector payloads, tool arguments, or model outputs.