Anchoran Webstore

The plugin catalog for Anchoran OS's Webstore — versioned and released independently of Anchoran OS itself, so a new or updated app never requires a new Anchoran OS release. Anchoran OS fetches catalog.json from this repo's latest v#.#.# release live, every time the Webstore's Community section opens.

How it works

• catalog.json lists every published plugin: id, title, version, author (defaults to "Fachun Corporation" for everything published here so far), minAnchoranVersion (the oldest Anchoran OS build that can run it), and entry — a direct URL to that plugin's built, downloadable JS file.
• Each plugin lives under plugins/<id>/, with its real source in src/ and its built, minified output in dist/index.js — that dist file is exactly what Anchoran OS downloads and runs, nothing else.
• Anchoran OS never bundles this code. When someone clicks Install in the Webstore, Anchoran downloads that one file to its own local plugin storage and dynamically loads it from there.

The Anchoran App SDK

A plugin never imports Anchoran OS's own internal modules — those have no compatibility promise and change freely between Anchoran versions. Instead, a plugin's built file exports one function:

export function mount(container, sdk, ctx) {
  // container: a real DOM element, sized to the plugin's own window
  // sdk: the Anchoran App SDK (see below) — the only host API surface
  // ctx: { windowId } — this window's id, e.g. for logging/debugging
  //
  // Return a cleanup function, called when the window closes.
  return () => {
    /* unmount / stop timers / etc. */
  };
}

sdk (shape versioned by sdk.version, currently "1.0.0" — see catalog.json's own sdkVersion, which is the SDK version every plugin here is built against) currently exposes:

• sdk.React, sdk.ReactDOM — the host's own React/ReactDOM. A plugin renders through these (e.g. sdk.ReactDOM.createRoot(container).render(...)) instead of shipping its own copy — smaller downloads, and no risk of two React instances on one page.
• sdk.Icon, sdk.IconTile — Anchoran's own icon components, for a plugin that wants to look native.
• sdk.pushNotification(title, message) — pushes a real Anchoran notification.
• sdk.getAccentColor(), sdk.getThemeMode() — read the user's current theme, so a plugin's own UI can match it.

The SDK only ever grows in backward-compatible ways. A plugin built against SDK 1.0 keeps working on every later Anchoran OS release.

Building a plugin

npm install
npm run build

Bundles every plugins/<id>/src/index.js into plugins/<id>/dist/index.js via esbuild — react/react-dom are never bundled in, since a plugin talks to the host's copy through sdk instead of importing them itself.

Plugin roster (v2.2.0)

38 plugins as of this release: the pilot hello-plugin, 28 apps ported 1:1 from Anchoran OS's old bundled app list (calculator, chat, pomodoro, qrcode, snake, game2048, tictactoe, memorymatch, checkers, connectfour, minesweeper, sudoku, solitaire, chess, calendar, kanban, habittracker, weather, mindmap, spreadsheet, emojipicker, typingtest, ttsreader, clipboardmanager, ziptool, colorpicker, clock, magnifier), 8 groups fused from apps that shared the same real purpose instead of shipping near-duplicate plugins: chance (dice + coin), text-tools (JSON formatter + word counter + text diff + encode/decode), converter (units + currency), password-tools (generator + vault + strength checker), recorder (screen + voice), draw-studio (paint + pixel art, with layers/fill/shapes/undo added), image-tools (screenshot + wallpaper maker), and tasks-reminders (todo + reminders), and code-studio (Anchoran Code Studio) — a local mini-IDE, built with a real CodeMirror 6 editor and real Prettier, for writing, previewing, exporting, and optionally packaging-for-publishing your own Anchoran plugin, entirely from within Anchoran OS itself; see its own plugins/code-studio/src/index.js header for the full design.

tictactoe, checkers, connectfour and chess — every 2-player game in the roster — also ship a bot opponent (Easy/Medium/Hard).

Four apps that used to be bundled apps stay core to Anchoran OS instead of becoming plugins: notes, photoViewer, mediaPlayer and browser are wired in as Files'/Launcher's own default file-type and URL handlers, not user-installable apps, so they're not in this catalog. A further group (systemMonitor, networkMonitor, storageUsage, eventViewer, startupApps, recycleBin, onScreenKeyboard, narrator, embeddedApp) stayed core because they need privileged host access (real CPU/network/disk stats, the internal event log, startup-app config, the virtual filesystem, system-level input hooks) that the App SDK deliberately doesn't expose to third-party code.

Testing a plugin

npm install
npm run build
npm test

tests/smoke.test.js mounts every plugin in a real jsdom + React 18 DOM (with the canvas package for real <canvas> support) using a fake SDK, fires a basic interaction, and calls the returned cleanup — catching the class of bug this repo's plugins are most at risk of: an effect or listener written as if it's still inside Anchoran's own React tree, or a timer/listener the cleanup function forgets to remove.

Publishing

Bump catalog.json's relevant plugin version (and package.json's own version for this repo, its overall release), add an entry to CHANGELOG.md, commit, tag v#.#.# classically (no Version # | Build … styling — that convention is Anchoran OS's own), and push. A GitHub Release at that tag, with catalog.json and every plugins/*/dist/index.js attached, is what Anchoran OS actually reads.

CHANGELOG.md is also what the Webstore's own in-app "Changelog" button shows (Anchoran OS's Webstore → Community section) — fetched live from this repo's main branch, the same way Anchoran OS's own "What's new" fetches its CHANGELOG.md, so a release isn't done until this file says what changed.