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Create a Backstage Plugin

A Backstage Plugin adds functionality to Backstage.

Create a Plugin​

To create a new frontend plugin, make sure you've run yarn install and installed dependencies, then run the following on your command line (a shortcut to invoking the backstage-cli new --select plugin) from the root of your project.

yarn new

And then select frontend-plugin.

Example of output when creating a new plugin

This will create a new Backstage Plugin based on the ID that was provided. It will be built and added to the Backstage App automatically.

If the Backstage App is already running (with yarn start) you should be able to see the default page for your new plugin directly by navigating to http://localhost:3000/my-plugin.

Example of new plugin running in browser

You can also serve the plugin in isolation by running yarn start in the plugin directory. Or by using the yarn workspace command, for example:

yarn workspace @backstage/plugin-my-plugin start # Also supports --check

This method of serving the plugin provides quicker iteration speed and a faster startup and hot reloads. It is only meant for local development, and the setup for it can be found inside the plugin's dev/ directory.

Other Plugin Library Package Types​

There are other plugin library package types that you can chose from. To be able to select the type when you create a new plugin just run: yarn new. You'll then be asked what type of plugin you wish to create like this:

List of available plugin types to pick from