Google Joins Agent Plugins Group to Standardize Portable Plugin Format

Google has joined the Agent Plugins group as a core maintainer, represented by Senior Staff Engineer Kevin Hou. The team is building support for the open specification into their products. Agent Plugins provides a way to package skills, tools, and more into portable plugins.

The problem with current solutions is that they require duplicated efforts from developers. A skill or MCP server can be used in multiple clients, but each client has its own requirements for the plugin's manifest, directory layout, and configuration. Agent Plugins solves this issue by providing a standard format for plugins.

A plugin is a directory with a specific structure, including skills, an MCP server declaration, and client-specific extensions. The manifest is a simple JSON file that describes the plugin's metadata. Skills live in a subdirectory called 'skills/', while MCP servers are declared in 'mcp.json'. Client-specific extensions can be added in the final directory of the path.

Google products Agents CLI and Data Agent Kit already support the Agent Plugins format. The team expects to bring support to more products that work with Skills and MCP servers. Developers can start building plugins by creating a directory, adding a plugin.json file, and writing a 'hello world' instruction in skills/greet/SKILL.md.