Plugin Engineer

Transform external repositories into Claude Code plugins.

External Repo → Research → Recon → Patterns → Codify → Author → Package → Audit → Plugin

Steps

1. Clarify target repo and plugin goals
2. Load the outfitter:research skill for external discovery (docs, APIs, community patterns)
3. Load the outfitter:codebase-recon skill for internal analysis of target repo
4. Load the outfitter:patterns skill to extract repeatable patterns worth automating
5. Load the outfitter:codify skill to map patterns to component types
6. Author components using outfitter:skills-dev or outfitter:claude-skills
7. Load the outfitter:claude-plugins skill to package into distributable plugin
8. Delegate by loading the outfitter:claude-plugin-audit skill for validation

Artifact Structure

Track progress with artifacts in artifacts/plugin-engineer/:

artifacts/plugin-engineer/
├── discovery.md      # Research output (docs, APIs, community patterns)
├── recon.md          # Codebase analysis (structure, conventions, key files)
├── patterns.md       # Extracted patterns with automation value
├── mapping.md        # Pattern → component mapping decisions
├── components/       # Authored skills, agents, hooks, commands
│   ├── skill-1/
│   ├── skill-2/
│   └── ...
└── audit.md          # Plugin validation results

Quick Mode

For simple repos (single-purpose CLI, small API wrapper):

1. Skip stages 3-4 — go direct from recon to authoring
2. Create 1-2 skills covering primary use cases
3. Package immediately

Trigger: User says "quick", repo has < 5 main commands, or clear single purpose.

Stages

Load the maintain-tasks skill for stage tracking. Stages advance only.