minecraft-plugin-repository-opinions

name	minecraft-plugin-repository-opinions
description	Opinionated standards for building Paper Minecraft plugin repositories: repo shape and single-source versioning, code architecture, state and config ownership, packet and presentation policy, cross-play GUI constraints, release contracts, and idempotency rules. Use when creating a new Paper plugin repo, scaffolding its Maven build or package layout, deciding where a piece of state or config belongs, adding packet-based presentation or display entities, designing a GUI or command that must work on both Java and cross-play clients, or cutting a plugin release and version bump.
compatibility	Paper plugin repositories built with Maven, on the Java version the targeted Paper line documents as required
metadata	{"author":"Leeor Nahum","version":"0.1.0"}

Minecraft Plugin Repository Opinions

One repo, one Paper plugin, one durable contract. Every plugin is a small, generic, server-agnostic product built the same way: thin entry points around a real core, one owner per fact of state, and a release that never lies about what it contains. Apply every rule below to new repos; when auditing an existing repo, treat a mismatch as a finding, not a style preference.

Repo Shape

• One Maven Paper plugin per repository. Do not fold multiple independently-released plugins into one repo, and do not split one plugin's cohesive feature across repos.
• Every repository carries a hosting-platform description, set when the repository is first published and kept in sync afterward. A repository with an empty description is not finished. On GitHub this is gh repo edit <owner>/<repo> --description "<text>", and it is a distinct field from the README, the plugin.yml description, and the release notes.
• The description is one sentence, capitalized, ending in a period, and short enough to read unwrapped in a repository list. It states what the plugin IS and the platform it targets, for example Durable multi-currency economy service for Paper. or Velocity health gate and safe return flow for limbo networks.
• The description must not drift from the plugin's actual surface. It names the capability, never a project, a customer, a server, or a marketing phrase, so a generic plugin stays generic. Fold in the platform word (Paper, Velocity) rather than leaving the reader to guess.
• When a plugin's owned surface changes enough that the sentence stops being true, update the description in the same change that moves the surface, exactly as with every other version surface.
• Language level matches the Java version the targeted Paper line requires. Check the target line's documented requirement at setup time rather than assuming a cached number; the requirement moves with Minecraft releases. Paper API is a provided dependency, never shaded.
• Standard Maven layout (src/main/java, src/main/resources), nothing bespoke.
• Single source of truth for the version: the Maven <version> is the only place the version is typed. It is filtered into plugin.yml's version: via resource filtering, and the build's finalName produces a deterministic jar name from it. A hand-typed version anywhere else (plugin.yml, a constant, a README badge) is a bug, not a style choice.

<build>
  <finalName>${project.artifactId}-${project.version}</finalName>
  <resources>
    <resource>
      <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
      <filtering>true</filtering>
    </resource>
  </resources>
</build>

name: Sample
version: '${project.version}'
main: com.example.sample.SamplePlugin
api-version: '1.21' # set to the targeted Paper line's API version

Names above are placeholders showing the shape (<Name> plugin, <Name>Plugin main class); choose real names per project.

• Every repo carries its own AGENTS.md. It is the durable, living contract for that plugin: architecture principles, package structure, key conventions (PDC keys, config file shapes, permission nodes), code style, and how to verify a change. Update it in the same change that changes the thing it documents.
• Every repo carries an operator-facing README.md: what the plugin does, requirements, installation, the command table with permissions, and the config shape. It is written for a server admin installing the jar, not for a contributor reading the code.

Code Shape

• The JavaPlugin subclass is the composition root and a small facade: it wires up managers, listeners, tasks, and commands, and exposes the plugin's core operations as named methods (spawn, remove, grant, reset, and so on). Listeners, commands, and tasks call into it; they never reimplement its logic.
• Listeners, commands, and tasks stay thin: parse the trigger (event, input, tick), call one or two core methods, format the response. Business logic does not live in a listener body.
• Package split, one job per package:

Package	Job
config	Parses and validates config.yml plus any folder-of-YAML definitions; exposes typed accessors
model	Value types only (records), no behavior
manager	In-memory state, registries, and persistence coordination
listener	Thin Bukkit event handlers that translate events into manager or plugin calls
task	Scheduled or repeating work; bounded and documented, never open-ended polling
command	Thin command handlers: parse input, call core methods, respond
util	Shared stateless helpers

• Value types are Java records, not mutable POJOs with getters.
• Player-facing and console-facing messages use Adventure components, not legacy color-coded strings.
• Commands and permissions are declared in plugin.yml, not registered imperatively in code, and every command wires tab completion. Permission nodes are namespaced to the plugin (<plugin>.<category>.<action>).

State Doctrine

• PersistentDataContainer (PDC) holds state attached to a Minecraft object: an entity, item, block, or chunk. A stable namespaced id tag on the object is that object's identity. Never encode identity, type, or tunable values in a model number, custom-model-data integer, or lore string; those are display, not data.
• Plugin data files hold plugin-owned state that has no natural Minecraft-object home: player records, counters, registries, cross-session progress.
• One owner per fact. Every piece of state has exactly one authoritative store. The same fact never lives in both a PDC tag and a data file, or in two different data files, with one silently trusted over the other.

Config Doctrine

• config.yml holds global, singleton settings for the plugin.
• A folder of YAML files (one file per definition, or a few grouped files) holds repeatable domain definitions: item types, reward tiers, spawn definitions, whatever the plugin's domain repeats.
• One central parsing and validation layer per plugin is the only code that reads raw YAML. It fails loud with actionable diagnostics (file name, key path, what was expected), never a silent default substitution and never a bare stack trace surfaced to an operator.
• Never overwrite an admin's existing config file on startup or update. Fill in missing keys or migrate a schema only through an explicit, logged step; a version bump never silently rewrites a file an operator already customized.
• The hot-reload story is defined per plugin, not improvised at reload time: build a new validated config snapshot, then swap it in atomically. Anything already in flight against the old snapshot (an open session, a pending task) re-validates against the new one rather than trusting a stale reference.
• When a feature request can be served by adding a key to an existing YAML schema, do that before reaching for a new plugin or a new config file.

Generic and Sellable

• Plugins are server-agnostic products, not fixtures wired to one server's layout. No hard-coded world names, coordinates, hostnames, or host-specific business rules; every place-specific value is config.
• Every gate a plugin enforces is a permission node, never a rank name, group name, or other host-specific identity string. A host maps its own ranks onto the plugin's nodes; the plugin never knows what those ranks are called.
• Extension points are hooks, not forks: expose integration through Bukkit's ServicesManager or a small exposed API class, and fire custom Bukkit events for anything another plugin might want to observe or veto.
• Every plugin ships a PlaceholderAPI expansion exposing its useful state (counts, cooldowns, ranges, statuses) as placeholders, even before any known consumer needs them.

Packet and Presentation Doctrine

• Default to native Paper APIs. Display entities (TextDisplay, ItemDisplay, BlockDisplay) cover holograms and presentation objects, with setVisibleByDefault(false) plus per-player showEntity/hideEntity for visibility scoping. They are real, single-state entities; reach past them only when per-viewer divergence is actually required.
• Packets are used only through one shared presentation-transport dependency (PacketEvents), never ad hoc per-plugin packet code and never NMS reached into directly. Reach for it when presentation must bypass server logic entirely (client-only fake entities) or needs state that differs per viewer (rewritten item lore or appearance, a disguised identity on an otherwise-real item).
• Creative-mode inventory echo interception is mandatory for any client-side item disguise. Creative clients are item-authoritative, so a creative player touching a disguised item can materialize the fake data into server truth unless the transport intercepts and restores it. Survival is unaffected because the server stays authoritative there.
• Any packet-consuming code re-verifies against its exact Minecraft version and packet-library version on every bump to either. A green build does not mean the packet contract still holds; re-run the packet-path checks explicitly.
• Cite minecraft.wiki for protocol details. The former wiki.vg documentation was merged into it in 2024, so older habits and links pointing there resolve to dead pages; always use the minecraft.wiki protocol documentation hub.

Cross-Play UI

• Design every required interaction to work identically on Java and cross-play clients.
• Never make left-click versus right-click the deciding input for a required flow. Treat them as equivalent, or back one of them with a redundant button.
• Never require an anvil, sign, or other typed-text input inside a required GUI flow; typed-input UI is unreliable or absent on cross-play clients.
• Build required flows from GUI buttons, presets, and commands, all of which every client can drive identically. Reserve richer Java-only input for optional, clearly-labeled enhancements that degrade gracefully when absent.

Versioning and Release

• SemVer (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH), tagged vX.Y.Z.
• Release assets are immutable and named <plugin>-<version>-paper-<mc>.jar. Never overwrite a published asset; a bad release gets a new version, not a silent replacement.
• Every version surface agrees: the Maven <version>, the filtered plugin.yml version, README badges and install instructions, the git tag, and the release notes. A release with mismatched surfaces is not done.
• Minor bump: added or improved capability that stays compatible with existing config schema, commands, permissions, and protocol contract.
• Major bump: changed config schema, changed or removed commands, changed or removed permission nodes, or a changed protocol or presentation contract.
• Any version-sensitive internal (a data-components API call, packet-library code, an NMS adapter) lives behind a narrow, named adapter and is pinned to the exact server or library build it was verified against. Bumping that build is a deliberate, tested step, never an incidental side effect of an unrelated release.

Idempotency

• Any transaction-like API (grants a reward, moves currency, consumes a one-time collectible, applies a purchase) takes a caller-supplied request id and is idempotent on it: replaying the same request id produces the same outcome without double-applying the effect.
• Results are sealed, typed outcomes, never a bare boolean. A result type or enum states exactly what happened (already applied, newly applied, rejected with a reason). A boolean cannot distinguish "nothing happened because it already happened" from "nothing happened because it failed."

Verification Boundary

• mvn clean package is the build gate. It must succeed cleanly before a change is considered done. It does not start a server and proves nothing about runtime behavior by itself.
• Manual, live-server test scenarios (the steps a human runs on a real server to confirm behavior) are documented in the repo, in AGENTS.md or a dedicated testing doc, not left implicit in someone's head.
• Never auto-deploy a jar from a developer's working tree to any server. A deploy ships a release artifact, never a dev build.