Setting Up a New Plugin

Creating the Plugin Structure

To create a new plugin, follow these steps:

1. Create a new directory with a unique name inside the plugins folder:

   transformerlab/plugins/<unique_name>/

2. Add four required files to your plugin directory:

   transformerlab/plugins/<unique_name>/
   ├── index.json    # Plugin metadata and configuration
   ├── info.md       # User documentation
   ├── main.py       # Core implementation (covered in next section)
   └── setup.sh      # Dependency installation script

This guide covers how to create the supporting files (index.json, info.md, and setup.sh). The implementation of main.py will be covered in detail on the following pages.

Configuring index.json

The index.json file defines your plugin's metadata, requirements, and parameters:

{
    "name": "Plugin Name",
    "uniqueId": "my_plugin",
    "description": "Exports the current model to GGUF format so it can be run on computers without a GPU.",
    "plugin-format": "python",
    "type": "exporter",
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "model_architectures": [
        "LlamaForCausalLM",
        "FalconForCausalLM",
        ...
    ],
    "files": [
        "main.py",
        "setup.sh"
    ],
    "setup-script": "setup.sh",
    "parameters": {
        "outtype": {
            "title": "Output Format",
            "type": "string",
            "default": "q8_0",
            "enum": [
                "q8_0",
                "f16",
                "f32"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Key Fields

Field	Description	Requirements
name	Display name shown to users	Should be clear and descriptive
uniqueId	Internal identifier	Must match folder name, no spaces
description	Detailed explanation	Displayed in the UI to help users understand functionality
plugin_format	Plugin category	Must be one of: "loader", "trainer", "evaluator", "generator", "exporter", "rag"
version	Plugin version	Follow semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH)
parameters	Parameters that are configurable	Must follow JSONSchema-Form format

Writing info.md

The info.md file provides user documentation in Markdown format. This should include:

1. A clear explanation of what the plugin does
2. Instructions for using the plugin
3. Details about available parameters

Example Structure

# My Plugin

## Overview

This plugin does xyz

## Usage

...

## Parameters

...

Creating setup.sh

The setup.sh script installs dependencies and performs one-time setup operations when the plugin is first installed or re-installed.

setup.sh is just a shell script that runs directly on the host machine. The most common use for this file is to install dependencies. If you are installing python dependencies, use uv for example the file might contain:

uv pip install langchain-openai datasets