Plugins in the editor

Aphelion loads third-party nodes written against aphelion_sdk. Authors never import core, effects, render, or ui.

Discovery order

1. Bundled plugins/*.py (next to the app)
2. User userdata/plugins/*.py
3. Installed packages that advertise aphelion.plugins entry points
4. Classes decorated with @aphelion_sdk.register_plugin in those modules

A same-stem file in the user folder overrides the bundled module. Files whose names start with _ are skipped.

Drop-in example: copy ../aphelion-sdk/examples/grayscale_effect.py into plugins/ or userdata/plugins/, then reload.

Preferences → Plugins

• Toggle bundled, user, and entry-point loading.
• Enable or disable each discovered plugin. Disabled plugins stay listed but are omitted from Add Node.
• Reload plugins re-imports files from disk without restarting.
• Open bundled folder / Open user folder opens those directories in the system file manager.

Discovery and enablement flags are stored in userdata/preferences.json and applied at boot.

Reload applies to new nodes. Reopen the project to refresh plugin nodes already on the graph (they keep the class object from when they were created).

Installing a packaged plugin

aphelion-sdk build path/to/effect.py -o dist
pip install dist/aphelion_plugin_*.whl

Then enable it under Preferences → Plugins (entry points) and reload, or restart the editor.

See SDK packaging for wheels, entry points, and copying sources into the editor's user plugin folder.