Plugman

Plugman is a standalone, vault-local package manager for Obsidian community plugins.

The CLI is implemented in Go and targets Linux, macOS, and Windows desktop.

Install

Install once for your user account; the executable does not belong in a Vault.

macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/kriss-spy/plugman/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

Windows PowerShell:

irm https://github.com/kriss-spy/plugman/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex

Both installers select the correct CPU architecture, verify the release checksum, install without administrator access, and add Plugman to the user PATH. Open a new terminal afterward. Developers with Go installed may instead run go install github.com/kriss-spy/plugman/cmd/plugman@latest.

To install without changing PATH, set PLUGMAN_NO_MODIFY_PATH=1 before the macOS/Linux command. In PowerShell, run $env:PLUGMAN_NO_MODIFY_PATH="1" before the Windows command.

Uninstall

Plugman has no uninstall command for itself; removing the executable and the user PATH entry is all that is required. Uninstalling Plugman never touches the plugins it manages inside a Vault; uninstall those from the Vault with plugman uninstall <ids...> or Obsidian itself first, if you want them gone.

macOS or Linux (the default install directory is ~/.local/bin):

rm ~/.local/bin/plugman

Then remove the export PATH='...' line the installer added to your shell profile (~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or a fish fish_add_path line).

Windows PowerShell (the default install directory is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\plugman\bin):

Remove-Item "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\plugman" -Recurse -Force

Then remove the Plugman directory from your user PATH (System Properties > Environment Variables, or [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable in PowerShell).

If you installed with go install, uninstall with go clean -i github.com/kriss-spy/plugman/cmd/plugman and delete the binary from your GOBIN. To leave the executable in place but out of the shell PATH, only revert the PATH changes the installer made.

Use

Run Plugman from the root of the Vault you want to manage:

plugman install dataview ./plugins.list
plugman install https://github.com/kriss-spy/obsidian-opencode
plugman update
plugman outdated
plugman export plugins.list

install accepts plugin IDs, Plugin List paths, and public GitHub repository or release URLs. New plugins are disabled unless --enable is passed. When Obsidian is open, its CLI must be installed and enabled so Plugman can safely quiesce and reload plugins; closed-Vault operations do not require it.

info and outdated use bounded read-only metadata checks. Set GH_TOKEN (or GITHUB_TOKEN) when resolving GitHub-only repositories to use authenticated GitHub API limits; Plugman never writes or prints the token.

Build locally

Use the Go version declared in go.mod. A normal development build is:

go build ./cmd/plugman

Release builds embed the tag in plugman --version and avoid local paths and VCS metadata. To reproduce a Linux amd64 artifact locally:

VERSION=v0.1.0
mkdir -p dist
CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build \
  -trimpath \
  -buildvcs=false \
  -ldflags="-s -w -X main.version=${VERSION}" \
  -o "dist/plugman_${VERSION}_linux_amd64" \
  ./cmd/plugman
sha256sum "dist/plugman_${VERSION}_linux_amd64"

Set GOOS to darwin or windows and GOARCH to amd64 or arm64 for the other release targets; Windows artifacts use an .exe suffix. Pushing a v* tag runs the same build matrix, packages version-bound installers, generates checksums.txt, and creates the GitHub Release. Do not reuse or move a published tag.

• Current product specification
• Architecture
• Domain language
• Decision records
• Original research handoff