Plugins and lifecycle

This page describes the Cordis plugin model and lifecycle state machine.

Fiber state machine

Every loaded plugin owns a Fiber scope with the following states:

PENDING → LOADING → ACTIVE
                 ↘ FAILED
ACTIVE → UNLOADING → DISPOSED

State	Meaning
PENDING	Declared, but required dependencies are not ready
LOADING	Dependencies are ready and apply is running
ACTIVE	The plugin is running
FAILED	apply threw an error
UNLOADING	The plugin is unloading and disposing resources
DISPOSED	The plugin is fully unloaded

Dependency-driven loading

A plugin with inject waits for every required service before loading:

export const inject = ['tools', 'llm']

export function apply(ctx: Context) {
  // ctx.tools and ctx.llm are ready here.
}

If a required service disappears, for example during provider replacement, the plugin unloads automatically (ACTIVE → DISPOSED) and loads again when the service returns.

Automatic cleanup

Every registration made through ctx is undone when the plugin unloads:

export function apply(ctx: Context) {
  // Event listener: removed automatically on unload.
  ctx.on('some-event', handler)

  // Custom resource: the returned disposer runs on unload.
  ctx.effect(() => {
    const connection = createConnection()
    return () => connection.close()
  })
}

The framework tracks and disposes all of these operations:

• ctx.on(event, handler) — event listener
• ctx.tools.register(tool) — tool registration
• ctx.llm.registerAdapter(names, adapter) — LLM adapter registration
• ctx.effect(() => cleanup) — custom resource

During unload, disposer invocation starts in reverse registration order, but multiple async disposers run concurrently and have no serial completion guarantee. Put order-dependent cleanup in one disposer returned from a single ctx.effect() and await its steps serially there.

Nested contexts

ctx.plugin() creates a child Fiber that inherits the parent context but has an independent lifecycle:

export function apply(ctx: Context) {
  // Register a child plugin.
  ctx.plugin(childPlugin)

  // The child has its own Fiber and unloads with its parent.
}

Dispose semantics

To stop a plugin instance early:

import type { Context } from '@deepseek-ai/cordis'

declare const ctx: Context
declare function myPlugin(ctx: Context): void

const fiber = ctx.plugin(myPlugin)

// Dispose it manually later.
await fiber.dispose()

dispose guarantees:

1. All registrations owned by the plugin are removed.
2. Child plugins are recursively unloaded.
3. The returned promise resolves after all asynchronous cleanup finishes.

Hot replacement (HMR)

With @deepseek-ai/cordis-plugin-hmr loaded from cordis.yml, editing a plugin source file triggers:

1. Unload the old plugin and clean up its registrations.
2. Load the new code.
3. Run the new apply.

Because plugin registrations clean themselves up, hot replacement does not retain registrations from the old instance.

Example lifecycle

export function apply(ctx: Context) {
  console.log('plugin loading')

  ctx.effect(() => {
    console.log('effect registered')
    return () => console.log('effect cleaned up')
  })
}

Loading prints:

plugin loading
effect registered

Unloading prints:

effect cleaned up

Next steps

• Services and dependencies — expose a capability to other plugins
• Event system — communicate between plugins
• Cordis tutorial — the same lifecycle, services, and events built step by step against the Cordis runtime