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Plugins

Everything you see in the host is a plugin. A plugin is a small piece of tooling that runs inside your app. This means they have full access to its runtime, databases, and HTTP clients. Plugins describe their UI with Livewire's Compose-based widget set. That UI is streamed to the host and rendered there, not on the device.

The Plugin interface

A plugin is two things: an identity, and a composable.

interface Plugin {
  // How this plugin's selector appears in the host application
  val info: PluginInfo

  // Custom composition to build UI to be remotely rendered
  @LivewireComposable
  @Composable
  fun Content()
}

PluginInfo carries the identity shown in the host's plugin list:

PluginInfo(
  pluginId = "database",        // stable, unique id
  title = "Database",           // display name in the host
  icon = Icons.Rounded.Storage, // optional — any Compose ImageVector
)

Installing plugins

Plugins are registered on the LivewireClient builder:

val livewireClient = LivewireClient {
  install(DatabasePlugin(context))
  install(NetworkPlugin())
  install(RecompositionPlugin())
}

When the host connects, the client sends a manifest enumerating every installed plugin. The host then lists them by title and icon. There is no host-side registration needed.

Lifecycle

There are no explicit lifecycle hooks outside of the standard Compose lifecycle:

  1. When you select a plugin in the host, the client launches Content() in a headless composition (powered by Molecule) wrapped in the client's LivewireTheme.
  2. Every recomposition emits an updated LayoutNode tree, which is diffed and streamed to the host as a full tree or a patch list.
  3. Interactions on the host (clicks, text input, slider drags) come back as LivewireAction messages and fire the corresponding callbacks in your composition.
  4. When the plugin is deselected or the connection drops, the composition is disposed.

Because it's a real composition, ordinary Compose idioms just work: remember, mutableStateOf, collectAsState(), LaunchedEffect, and DisposableEffect for setup/teardown that should follow the plugin's visibility.

Crash isolation

If Content() throws, the client reports PluginCrashed to the host and clears the active plugin. Your app keeps running, and the host shows the failure within the plugin panel.

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