Manifest-First Plugin System (OpenClaw)
- Entity ID:
ent-20260423-p3a000000004 - Type:
pattern - Scope:
private - Status:
active
Description
OpenClaw's extension architecture: a central plugin registry with four architectural layers (discovery, enablement, runtime loading, surface consumption) and twelve capability types (text inference, speech, media understanding, image/music/video generation, web search, messaging channels, etc.). Plugins extend the gateway's capability surface across all agents, contrasting with Claude Code's four per-agent extension mechanisms (MCP, plugins, skills, hooks) that modify a single agent's action surface.
Key claims
- Claude Code vs OpenClaw: per-agent context vs gateway capability surface
- Opposite bets follow from different trust models and deployment topologies
Relations
- OpenClaw --[contains]--> Manifest-First Plugin System (OpenClaw)
- Manifest-First Plugin System (OpenClaw) --[contrasts_with]--> MCP Runtime Management