Alex ACT Plugin Mall

Alex ACT Plugin Mall lets you add trusted capabilities to GitHub Copilot without copying a whole AI setup into every project. Start with Alex ACT ONE, a single install that covers critical thinking, engineering craft, prose and documentation, document conversion, and visual authoring.

The Mall publishes 359 curated plugins for direct installation and maintains a trust-scored discovery index across 4,862 plugins in 53 stores.

• Installation is opt-in and user-invoked. It never changes your existing projects.
• Current release: v3.0.0.

Before you install

The trust score ranks the store, not the skill. It is computed from provenance, maintenance, adoption, and license clarity — all properties of the source — so every plugin from one store tends to carry the same number. A high score means a reputable, maintained source published this. It does not mean the content is correct.

Nothing in this pipeline reads content. Scanning indexes what exists, packaging validates structure, and no step compiles a code sample or resolves a reference. That is the reader's job, and it is worth doing before a plugin holds your credentials or joins a runtime every project loads.

Alex ACT ONE ships evaluate-before-adopting for exactly this. Rather than installing straight from the CLI, ask it to evaluate the candidate first:

Evaluate <plugin-name>@alex-mall before I install it.

It resolves which copy you are actually looking at when several stores carry the same name, verifies the checkable specifics — package names against the registry, APIs against the SDK, endpoints by fetching them — follows every reference, weighs the freshness stamp, and judges fit for where you are putting it. A real pass over a plugin scored 95, the top band, found a NuGet package that does not exist and an SDK API that was never published.

For a reversible per-project install you will uninstall in a second, skip it. Judge by what it costs to be wrong.

Quick install (GitHub Copilot CLI)

Prerequisite: the GitHub Copilot CLI. Confirm with copilot --version.

1. Register the marketplace (one-time)

copilot plugin marketplace add fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall

This registers the alex-mall marketplace with the CLI. It reads .github/plugin/marketplace.json from this repo; no credentials required.

2. Browse and install a plugin

# Browse everything published by alex-mall
copilot plugin marketplace browse alex-mall

# Install a plugin (plugin@marketplace format)
copilot plugin install <plugin-name>@alex-mall

# Install the recommended runtime
copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall

Plugins install into ~/.copilot/installed-plugins/alex-mall/<plugin-name>/.

Install the runtime first, then check what follows it. The alex-act-one plugin ships evaluate-before-adopting, a skill that reads a candidate the way your agent will read it: as instructions that run with your tools, your files, and your credentials. It reads any scripts the plugin bundles, and checks that the package names and APIs it cites actually exist.

Once the runtime is installed, ask it before you install anything else:

Evaluate <plugin-name>@alex-mall before I install it.

It costs a minute, and it earns that minute when adoption is hard to reverse: a runtime every project loads, or a plugin that will hold credentials. See Before you install for what the trust score does and does not cover.

3. Verify and manage

copilot plugin list                              # what is installed
copilot plugin update <plugin-name>@alex-mall    # pull the latest version
copilot plugin uninstall <plugin-name>@alex-mall # remove a plugin
copilot plugin marketplace list                  # registered marketplaces
copilot plugin marketplace remove alex-mall      # unregister the marketplace

Build an Alex ACT setup

Alex ACT ONE is the recommended starting point. It installs once at user level, and Copilot CLI, VS Code, and Microsoft Scout all read the same copy on disk.

Recommended path

1. Install it with copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall.
2. Turn on the always-on instructions once in each app you use, with /alex-act-one bootstrap-core. Activation previews every file and waits for your approval before writing anything.
3. Skills are available immediately. Instructions apply per app, because each app keeps its own profile.

The earlier constellation

Six packages preceded Alex ACT ONE: alex-act-core, alex-act-illustrator-plugin, alex-act-document-tools, alex-act-document-tools-portable, alex-act-enterprise, and alex-act-ai-operations. They remain in the catalog for existing installations and migration guidance. alex-act-core, alex-act-illustrator-plugin, alex-act-document-tools, alex-act-document-tools-portable, and alex-act-enterprise are withdrawn for new installations. alex-act-ai-operations remains available under its independent lifecycle. Install Alex ACT ONE instead.

Private specialization: alex-act-msft is private and intended only for Microsoft-internal work. It is not published in this public Mall.

Withdrawn plugins

• alex-act-core: Withdrawn: This package is no longer maintained. For new installations, use alex-act-one@alex-mall. Install copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall instead.
• alex-act-document-tools: Withdrawn: This package is no longer maintained. For new installations, use alex-act-one@alex-mall. Install copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall instead.
• alex-act-document-tools-portable: Withdrawn: This package is no longer maintained. For new installations, use alex-act-one@alex-mall. Install copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall instead.
• alex-act-enterprise: Withdrawn: This package is no longer maintained. For new installations, use alex-act-one@alex-mall. Install copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall instead.
• alex-act-illustrator-plugin: Withdrawn: This package is no longer maintained. For new installations, use alex-act-one@alex-mall. Install copilot plugin install alex-act-one@alex-mall instead.

Use in VS Code

The Copilot CLI plugins integrate with GitHub Copilot Chat in VS Code once installed.

1. Install the GitHub Copilot and Copilot Chat extensions in VS Code (1.117 or later).

2. Install plugins via the Copilot CLI using the steps above. In VS Code 1.131, keep Agent Skills enabled, disable the broken generic plugin-skill resolver, and disable automatic next-change reveal to avoid editor conflicts:

   "chat.useAgentSkills": true,
   "github.copilot.chat.skillTool.enabled": false,
   "chat.editing.revealNextChangeOnResolve": false
   

   Namespaced commands and agents remain available while the resolver workaround is active.

3. Reload VS Code or run Developer: Reload Window so Copilot Chat re-scans the installed plugins.

4. In Chat, invoke a plugin's commands with /, agents with @, or skills by describing the task the skill's frontmatter is scoped to.

Per-repo auto-install

To make a project auto-install specific plugins for every collaborator, commit a .github/copilot/settings.json that names the marketplace and the plugins:

{
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": {
    "alex-mall": {
      "type": "github",
      "repository": "fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall"
    }
  },
  "enabledPlugins": {
    "alex-act-one@alex-mall": true
  }
}

• extraKnownMarketplaces registers the marketplace so the CLI knows where to fetch from. Without it, plugin specs referencing @alex-mall will not resolve unless the collaborator has already registered alex-mall at the user level.
• enabledPlugins is the declarative auto-install list. Keys are plugin specs (<name>@<marketplace>); values are true (enabled) or false (disabled).
• A plugin enabled only through the repository file is scoped to that repository — it auto-installs and activates there, but stays inactive in unrelated projects.
• Both keys are read by the GitHub Copilot CLI and by Copilot cloud agent, so the same file drives both local sessions and cloud-run sessions.

Settings tiers (precedence order)

The three files are merged in that order; later wins. For enabledPlugins and extraKnownMarketplaces, repository entries override user entries per key.

Contribute a plugin

Open a pull request using the plugin-submission template. Automation checks the payload; a CODEOWNER decides whether it is accepted. CONTRIBUTING.md has the submission steps, evidence, and licensing requirements.

Browse the catalog

• Full catalog index — every plugin, sortable
• By category — 21 canonical categories plus uncategorized
• By store — per-source drilldown
• Trust audit — score distribution and top plugins
• Source registry — the 53 stores the discovery catalog aggregates

Top 10 stores by trust

How trust scoring works

Every plugin gets a 0–100 score from six published signals:

First-party plugins (🏆) rank highest because they earn the +50 provenance bonus. Third-party entries with installable: true retain an installation route; reference-only entries are discovery evidence, not install targets.

Generated by scripts/render-catalog.cjs at 2026-10-12T11:10:31.018Z. Source of truth: catalog/*.json. Never hand-edit this README.