catalog.json is the one list of every plugin across both license tiers, with its bundles and counts (contract plugins.catalog v1). The marketplace worker, the CLI client and the website read it instead of joining two registries themselves. It is generated together with registry.json and counts.json; nobody edits any of the three.

releases.json is release data. It is written only by scripts/verify-published-checksums.sh --write <tag> from the bytes published on the GitHub release, never by hand. A plugin without a row is left out of the registry until its release is published.

The generator is built from the pinned cli commit's vendor tree (go run github.com/nself-org/cli/tools/catalog@<ref> cannot work while cli's go.mod has replace directives). catalog.json records the bundles pin as generated_from.bundles_ref. The catalog lags the licensed repo by that pin; bump scripts/bundles.ref to take newer licensed data.

Two licensed entries (auth, nself-audit) are carried by bundles without a catalog block. The catalog block for them comes from scripts/catalog/licensed-catalog-carry.json until its expiry date (2026-12-31); after that plugin-counts.sh fails, so the carry cannot outlive its owners.

bash scripts/plugin-counts.sh                    # rewrite registry.json, catalog.json, counts.json
bash scripts/plugin-counts.sh --check            # write nothing; exit 1 and print the diff when stale
bash scripts/plugin-counts.sh --check --free-only  # CI without the bundles token: registry.json only

plugin-counts.sh reads the licensed side from a clone of nself-org/bundles (BUNDLES_DIR, default ../bundles, ../plugins-pro, or under $NSELF) at the pinned commit. In CI the workflow checks bundles out at that commit when PLUGINS_PRO_CHECKOUT_TOKEN exists (Mode A, all three files verified). Without the token (Mode B) only registry.json is verified, with the bundle membership and licensed slugs read back from the committed catalog.json; the job log says catalog and counts were not verified.

bash scripts/plugin-counts.sh --json prints the generated counts.json on stdout and writes nothing (the read-only use the cli shim relies on).

Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 drift or expired carry, 2 usage or generator failure, 3 precondition missing (no clone, no pinned commit).

counts.json keeps its shape (free, pro, overlap, totals, advertised). generated_from replaces the old generated_at and sources keys. cron and notify exist in both tiers: each appears once per tier in catalog.json and counts once.

• Plugin-Registry: the generated registry and how to change it
• Releasing
• Home