Tabularis is the desktop app that connects to your databases. Tabularium is the registry it pulls plugins from — this instance, or registry.tabularis.dev, or any other self-hosted Tabularium your users point their tabulariumRegistryUrl at. This page covers both halves of the developer story:

• Runtime — how a Tabularis plugin works on the wire (JSON-RPC over STDIO, manifest, methods).
• Registry — how that plugin is packaged and submitted here so other Tabularis users can find and install it.

The per-kind sections below — currently only Drivers — list every manifest field this registry expects, derived live from the configured kind schema. Use /api/docs/plugin-development?format=md for an LLM-pasteable copy of everything on this page (also linked in the page header).

For the full runtime protocol reference and every RPC method, see plugins/PLUGIN_GUIDE.md.

From zero to driver

Scaffold a working project with @tabularis/create-plugin:

npm create @tabularis/plugin@latest -- --db-type=network my-driver
cd my-driver
just dev-install

The generated project compiles on first cargo check, contains stubs for every required method, has a working test_connection, and ships a 5-platform release workflow. Pick the template that fits your data source:

Architecture: JSON-RPC over STDIO

Tabularis avoids dynamic linking. Plugins are standalone executables that run as child processes. When a user opens a connection:

1. Tabularis spawns the plugin as a child process.
2. Sends JSON-RPC 2.0 requests to the plugin's stdin, one per line.
3. Reads JSON-RPC 2.0 responses from the plugin's stdout, one per line.
4. Reuses the same process instance for the entire session.

stderr output is captured and shown in the log viewer — safe for debugging without breaking the protocol.

One manifest, two readers

.tabularium is the single canonical manifest — one file that serves both the host (loading the driver: executable, capabilities, data_types, settings) and the registry (listing it: name, description, category, kind, plus the kind-specific fields below). The host still reads a legacy manifest.json as a fallback; the registry does not treat manifest.json as a first-class source.

It lives at the plugin's repo root and must be uploaded as a standalone release asset — the registry resolves the manifest from release assets (GitHub silently renames the dotfile to default.tabularium; the registry accepts both names). The Drivers section below shows exactly which fields and constraints this registry expects.

Required methods

Your plugin must implement at least these. Optional methods can return [] or a -32601 error.

ping is optional but recommended — lightweight health check, falls back to test_connection when absent.

UI extensions & i18n

Beyond the driver, a plugin can contribute React UI via ui_extensions (scaffold one with --with-ui). UI components consume the host API from @tabularis/plugin-api.

Keep UI strings in locales/<lang>.json at the plugin root and read them with usePluginTranslation(pluginId) — the host loads them automatically (active language → English → the key itself):

const t = usePluginTranslation(pluginId);
t("toolbar.label");
t("toolbar.greeting", { table });

The host runtime is Lingui — author new keys ICU-style with single-brace {var} placeholders. Legacy i18next {{var}} placeholders still interpolate, so existing plugins keep working unchanged.

Publishing to this registry

Once your driver runs locally and binaries are on GitHub Releases:

1. Build release binaries (.github/workflows/release.yml from the scaffold does this on tag push).
2. Package each binary with the .tabularium manifest into a .zip per platform.
3. Publish a GitHub Release with the ZIPs attached — plus .tabularium as a standalone asset (it will show up as default.tabularium; that's fine). The release tag stripped of v must equal the manifest version.
4. Submit at /submit. The exact shape is in the schema reference. CI can validate against this registry via POST /api/manifest/validate. A manifest that fails validation is rejected with HTTP 422 — there is no silent fallback.

The admin may require manual approval — check /requests after submitting.

Using this registry from Tabularis

End users point their Tabularis at any Tabularium by setting tabulariumRegistryUrl in their config.json:

{ "tabulariumRegistryUrl": "https://registry.tabularis.dev" }

Both the in-app plugin browser and the install command will use that URL.

Core manifest fields

Plugin kinds

Drivers (driver)

Database driver plugins that extend Tabularis to talk to new data stores via JSON-RPC over STDIO — any language, any database.

Extensions

Example (YAML)

name: tabularis-clickhouse-driver
description: Connect Tabularis to ClickHouse over JSON-RPC with full DDL, query, and ER-diagram support.
category: integration
kind: driver
tags:
  - clickhouse
  - analytics
  - olap
license: MIT
icon: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/icon.svg
homepage: https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse
documentation_url: https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse#readme
support:
  email: maintainers@example.com
  issues_url: https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/issues
screenshots:
  - url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/screen-connect.png
    caption: Connection form with native ClickHouse fields
    alt: Tabularis connection dialog showing host, port, user, and database fields
  - url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/screen-query.png
    caption: Running a SELECT against the ontime table
    alt: Tabularis data grid showing ClickHouse query results
min_runtime_version: 0.9.13
readme: |
  # ClickHouse driver for Tabularis

  Adds a native ClickHouse connection to Tabularis. Supports SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE through execute_query, schema introspection for the explorer, DDL generation (CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, DROP), and ER-diagram rendering via get_relationships.

Example (JSON)

{
  "name": "tabularis-clickhouse-driver",
  "description": "Connect Tabularis to ClickHouse over JSON-RPC with full DDL, query, and ER-diagram support.",
  "category": "integration",
  "kind": "driver",
  "tags": [
    "clickhouse",
    "analytics",
    "olap"
  ],
  "license": "MIT",
  "icon": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/icon.svg",
  "homepage": "https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse",
  "documentation_url": "https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse#readme",
  "support": {
    "email": "maintainers@example.com",
    "issues_url": "https://github.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/issues"
  },
  "screenshots": [
    {
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/screen-connect.png",
      "caption": "Connection form with native ClickHouse fields",
      "alt": "Tabularis connection dialog showing host, port, user, and database fields"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/example/tabularis-clickhouse/main/assets/screen-query.png",
      "caption": "Running a SELECT against the ontime table",
      "alt": "Tabularis data grid showing ClickHouse query results"
    }
  ],
  "min_runtime_version": "0.9.13",
  "readme": "# ClickHouse driver for Tabularis\n\nAdds a native ClickHouse connection to Tabularis. Supports SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE through execute_query, schema introspection for the explorer, DDL generation (CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, DROP), and ER-diagram rendering via get_relationships.\n"
}

Where to get help

• Tabularis source + runtime docs — TabularisDB/tabularis. The plugins/PLUGIN_GUIDE.md covers every RPC method with full parameter shapes.
• Tabularium source (this registry) — TabularisDB/tabularium. Schema, validators, and submission flow.
• Example plugins to copy patterns from — the community registry and the Google Sheets driver (OAuth, sheets-as-tables, UI extensions).
• LLM-friendly export — the Raw markdown ↗ and Copy as markdown buttons at the top of this page surface everything as one flat document at /api/docs/plugin-development?format=md. Paste straight into any LLM (or curl it) when an assistant needs to author or review plugin manifests against this registry.
• Found something wrong here? — Open an issue against Tabularium, or ping this instance's admin.

Happy hacking — and when you ship something, submit it so the rest of Tabularis can use it.

Generated by Tabularium for https://registry.tabularis.dev.