<cite index="31-2">Agent Plugins 1.0.0 is an open, vendor-neutral specification for packaging Agent Skills and MCP servers into portable plugins. It was published by a TSC of Core Maintainers from Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel.</cite> <cite index="33-1">The move was jointly launched on August 6, 2026, aiming to establish a universal plugin packaging format for AI Agents.</cite> <cite index="33-2">The official compatibility list currently includes VS Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and Codex, as well as Amazon's Kiro. Google announced its participation in core maintenance the same day and plans to adopt Agent Plugins in Agents CLI and Data Agent Kit.</cite>
<cite index="32-2">If you already work with Agent Skills or MCP servers, this matters directly: Agent Plugins is not a third, competing format — it's the packaging layer that sits on top of both, so the skill-plus-tooling bundle you build once can install into six different agent clients without rewriting per-client setup instructions.</cite> <cite index="37-3">A plugin is just a folder with a plugin.json file at its root, with an optional skills/ folder and optional mcp.json file.</cite> <cite index="35-1">The steering committee has five members: Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel, and representatives say no single company's roadmap sets its direction.</cite>
<cite index="33-3">If the standard gains sufficient client support, developers won't need to rebuild all their skills and tool integrations when switching teams from Cursor to VS Code, or from Codex to another agent.</cite> However, <cite index="39-2">version 1.0.0 defines no permission model, no sandboxing, no signature checks and no secrets mechanism. Those are all listed as future work.</cite> <cite index="37-4">Permission declarations, client-enforced capability restrictions, consent flows, cryptographic signatures, provenance, secret injection, enterprise allowlists, audit trails, dependency resolution, and conformance tests are listed in the project's future-considerations document but not required for 1.0.0.</cite> For agent platform teams, this standardization reduces packaging friction and lowers switching costs, but security policies around plugin discovery and installation remain client-specific until v1.1+.