Plugins · oclif: The Open CLI Framework

Plugins are a great way to offer experimental functionality, allow users to extend your CLI, break up a CLI into modular components, or share functionality between CLIs.

Plugins can have commands or hooks just like a CLI. To add a plugin such as the not-found plugin plugin, first add it to your CLI with yarn add @oclif/plugin-not-found, then add the following to your package.json:

{
  "name": "mycli",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  // ...
  "oclif": {
    "plugins": [
      "@oclif/plugin-help",
      "@oclif/plugin-not-found"
    ]
  }
}

If you want users to be able to install their own plugins into your CLI, use the plugins plugin.

Useful Plugins

@oclif/plugin-not-found - Display a friendly "did you mean" message if a command is not found.
@oclif/plugin-plugins - Allow users to add plugins to extend your CLI.
@oclif/plugin-update - Add autoupdate support to the CLI.
@oclif/plugin-help - Help plugin for oclif.
@oclif/plugin-warn-if-update-available - Show a warning message if user is running an out of date CLI.
@oclif/plugin-which - Show which plugin a command comes from.
@oclif/plugin-commands - Add a commands command to list all the commands.
@oclif/plugin-autocomplete - Add bash/zsh autocomplete.

Building your own plugin

Writing code for plugins is essentially the same as writing within a CLI. They can export 3 different types: commands, hooks, and other plugins.

Run npx oclif plugin mynewplugin to create a plugin in a new directory. This will come with a sample command called hello.