Lenso: Build Products with Replaceable Plugins and Typed Capabilities

Introduction

Lenso is an innovative, local-first, and language-independent runtime engineered for applications that require flexible and dynamic behavior. It empowers developers to construct products from replaceable plugins, moving away from hidden framework complexities towards explicit, verifiable composition. By defining product roles as typed Capabilities and implementing them as Plugins, Lenso ensures clear relationships and predictable execution, making it suitable for evolving business systems, developer tools, and automation products.

Why Use Lenso and Key Benefits

Lenso offers several compelling advantages for modern application development:

• Replaceable Product Behavior: Plugins autonomously manage their configuration, state, lifecycle, failure policy, and provided or required Capabilities, allowing for easy swapping and updates.
• Typed Collaboration: Capability Interfaces explicitly define Plugin relationships across request, stream, and event Operations, enhancing clarity and reducing errors.
• Reviewable Composition: Application owners only need to modify the visible plugins/ directory, as the Host supplies defaults and rejects ambiguous or incompatible selections, simplifying review processes.
• Deterministic Execution: Every accepted application is transformed into an immutable Resolved App Plan before the Kernel starts it, ensuring consistent and predictable runtime behavior.
• Agent-Ready Workflows: Public skills facilitate cross-repository planning, Capability, Plugin, and App configuration, integrating seamlessly with agent-driven development practices.

Installation

To begin using Lenso, you can install its command-line interface (CLI) globally via npm:

npm install -g @lenso/cli

This CLI provides essential tools for creating, checking, and packaging your plugins efficiently.

Examples

You can quickly try out a typed Plugin by following this example, which exercises it through a real Execution Adapter:

npm install -g @lenso/cli

lenso plugin new example.echo
cd example.echo
lenso plugin check
lenso plugin dev \
  --operation execute \
  --request-json '{"name":"example.echo","arguments_json":"{\"text\":\"hello\"}"}'
lenso plugin pack

This sequence demonstrates how to generate a new Rust project for a plugin, verify it, run it in development mode with a specific request, and then pack it into a distributable .lenso-plugin release.

Links

For more detailed information and to explore Lenso further, please refer to these official resources:

• Get started
• Read the documentation
• Explore executable examples
• Install the Agent skills