Develop a plugin

Start with a Python function your team needs, then give it an API through ReliaForge. The backend's step-by-step tutorial uses a function that looks up a service's owning team. It includes complete files you can copy.

What you will build

After following the tutorial, you can call:

curl "http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/plugins/sample_tool/owner?service_name=payments"

The response is:

{"service": "payments", "team": "payments-ops"}

The example uses two preset records so you can try it locally without connecting another system.

Which files do I change?

First follow Getting started to generate sample_tool. Then:

Step	File or setting	What to do
Add your function	ownership.py	Put the team lookup function here
Add an API	router.py	Read the query parameter, call the function, and return JSON
Load the plugin	RELIAFORGE_PLUGIN_PATHS	Point to the parent directory and restart the backend
Share it with users	The plugin's README.md	Give them the URL, parameters, responses, and authentication instructions

The generated plugin already handles startup and shutdown. You can keep those files for this example. See the complete tutorial and runtime rules for the code and for what changes when a tool owns clients or background tasks.

How do I know it works?

Check the successful lookup, an unknown service, and the endpoint after stopping the plugin. They should return HTTP 200, 404, and 503. Starting it again should restore the successful lookup.

In local development, open http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/docs to find and try the new endpoint. The console shows the plugin's status and start and stop controls.

Share the plugin

Give the deployment maintainer the plugin directory, its Python dependency requirements, and a README. The maintainer installs those requirements, adds the directory to the backend's plugin search paths, and restarts the backend. The README should explain how users authenticate before calling the API in that deployment.

The bundled demo and runbook plugins also show how one plugin can call another plugin's shared Python service.