What is the AI Plugin manifest?
The AI Plugin manifest (ai-plugin.json) is a discovery file originally created for ChatGPT plugins. It tells AI assistants: "Here's my service, here's what it does, and here's my API spec."
Example
Serve at /.well-known/ai-plugin.json:
{
"schema_version": "v1",
"name_for_human": "Your Service",
"name_for_model": "your_service",
"description_for_human": "Search and analyze public datasets.",
"description_for_model": "Use this plugin to search public datasets by keyword and run analysis on specific datasets.",
"auth": { "type": "none" },
"api": { "type": "openapi", "url": "/openapi.json" }
}
Key fields
- name_for_model: A short, snake_case name the AI uses internally
- description_for_model: Tells the AI when and why to use this plugin — be specific
- api.url: Points to your OpenAPI spec so the AI knows your endpoints
- auth.type: Authentication method (
"none","user_http","service_http","oauth")
Spec maturity
Deprecated as a ChatGPT feature (April 2024) — OpenAI replaced plugins with Custom GPTs. However, the ai-plugin.json format is still widely used as a general-purpose discovery manifest by other AI tools and agent frameworks.
Learn more
- OpenAI plugin docs (archived) — Original specification