Docs: "plugin" and "command" each mean several different things
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Jul 16, 2026
Building a helper (a skill + an MCP server), I kept tripping over two words that each denote several distinct things.
"plugin" spans:
- the connector (MCP server / tools),
- the
.mcpbextension (that server packaged for Claude Desktop), - the skill (a policy doc that ships no tools), and
- the plugin bundle (connector + skill, distributed via a marketplace).
So "install the plugin" / "add the connector" / "enable the skill" / "install the extension" are four different actions with heavily overlapping words.
"command" spans:
- the plugin command primitive (
commands/*.md, e.g./commit-message), - a "command-style MCP" (a stdio server — the term the beads-mcp project uses), and
- a CLI subcommand (
deepwiki ask,deepwiki serve).
Three unrelated meanings in one small project. I ended up writing a glossary table into my own README just to keep them straight.
Ask: one canonical glossary + a diagram in the docs (plugin / connector / extension / skill / command / marketplace), one verb per artifact; reserve "command" for the slash-command primitive and use distinct terms ("CLI subcommand", "stdio server") elsewhere.