Plugin Development Workflow

There is a another way to create a plugin, without using ANY extra tools like ThirdFlow, Gatha, or Tinka…

After developing your plugin tiddlers using a third-party editor like VSCode or the in-browser TiddlyWiki tiddler editor:

  1. Open the TiddlyWiki that contains the desired tiddlers
  2. Open https://tiddlywiki.com/empty in a separate browser window
  3. Drag-and-drop the desired tiddlers into https://tiddlywiki.com/empty
  4. The $:/Import tiddler will appear. DO NOT press the “Import” button!
  5. Instead, EDIT the $:/Import tiddler
  6. Change the tiddler’s title to your desired plugin name (e.g., $:/plugins/yourname/pluginname)
  7. Scroll to the bottom of the tiddler to see the “extra” fields
  8. Change the value of the plugin-type field from “import” to “plugin”
  9. Delete the status field
  10. Scroll back to the top of the tiddler and press the “done” (checkmark) button to save the tiddler changes.

That’s it! You now have an INSTALLED plugin containing the “imported” tiddlers, which are all available as shadow tiddlers! Note that if there are any .js tiddlers in your plugin, you will need to save-and-reload for those tiddlers to take effect.

To install your plugin in another TiddlyWiki, you can simply drag-and-drop the newly created plugin tiddler (e.g. $:/plugins/yourname/pluginname) into that other TiddlyWiki.

enjoy,
-e

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