Developing Plugins

In NovaChat, plugins are the primary way to extend the application's functionality. They can be used to support new LLMs, create custom Bots, or integrate other features.

Principle

Plugins need to be developed using JavaScript. When using a plugin, NovaChat will run the plugin in a WebWorker and use message communication to call the plugin's functions.

Runtime Environment

It's important to note that plugins run in a WebWorker, so they cannot access the DOM. Additionally, the following APIs are blocked and should not be used:

• Cache-related: localStorage/sessionStorage/indexedDB/cookie, consider using the settings API instead
• Remote code: including eval/Function/import/import(), which are synonymous with insecurity. Please bundle all code into a single file

Plugin Types

Currently, plugins are mainly divided into two categories: LLM Provider and Bot. Although both can be used in NovaChat, the latter doesn't require custom API keys and will only use the configured default LLM Model.

Acknowledgements

The plugin system has drawn inspiration from many excellent designs, such as VSCode for Web, Figma, Joplin, and others.