Plugins within Plugins

Help Build BrainDrive
1

Hi All,

Below is the recording from a conversation Beck, Dave J, and I had regarding adding “plugin within plugin” functionality to BrainDrive.

This came up as a result of the work we are doing with the Chat W/ Documents plugin. Part of building out that plugin was adding a chat interface which Beck built from scratch. However, we also already have an AI chat interface that was built by Dave J here.

So what we want to be able to do is instead of Beck having to recreate the wheel with the AI chat functionality in his chat w/ docs plugin, he should just be able to add his additional components to the existing AI chat plugin.

This way he only has to add the new components vs. having to build everything from scratch.

This will accelerate community development dramatically so Dave is prioritizing this work to start in the next couple of weeks.

Questions, comments, concerns, and ideas welcome as always.

Thanks,
Dave

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@DJJones what do you think about “Add On” as the name for these things? Plugin Add Ons?

I thought maybe they could be listed in another section so you have plugins, and then plugin add ons.

Just a thought!

Dave W.

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We already have 2 different kinds of plugins, Settings and Page Builder kinds, this will be a third and perhaps we will expect to more in the future. The easiest solution would be to add to the Plugin Manager a way to sort based on the kind of plugin you are looking for. We already have sorting in that page and then it will be one stop shopping for all plugins verses multiple pages dealing with different kinds of plugins.

This also keeps the Core smaller in the end.

4

sounds good and yea I definitely don’t think we need another page just thinking about what the three different types of plugins are called on the plugin manager page.

To me settings and page builder kinds are both plugins because they work as a standalone thing (or at least I think they do lol). They don’t need a separate name besides plugin.

The difference here would be that this 3rd type of plugin does not work as a standalone thing, it only works as a part of another plugin. That’s why I was thinking perhaps calling these add ons might signal that, but not having a separate page for them since they are part of plugins.

Let me know if that makes sense or if I am missing something.

Thanks!
Dave W.

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