Extension Quickstart

This page walks the whole authoring path with real commands: scaffold a project, build it, lint it, sign it, and publish it. It takes a few minutes on a machine that already has Rust. For the concepts behind each step — what describe.json declares, what a component contributes — read Writing Extensions after this.

Use gtdx 1.2.8 or newer

Earlier releases have defects that bite immediately, and pinning an old version re-enters them:

• Through 1.2.7, the scaffold shipped no tests, so ci/local_check.sh ran cargo test against nothing and no one was told host tests were possible.
• Through 1.2.6, design, bundle, deploy and provider scaffolded every export as an empty stub, so a fresh extension built and installed cleanly and then contributed nothing.
• Through 1.2.5, gtdx dev watch mode rebuilt itself in a loop — a build re-touched the paths it was watching. gtdx dev --once was never affected.
• Through 1.2.2, cargo binstall pointed at the wrong path inside the release archive and silently fell back to a full source build, and gtdx publish left all-zero sha256 placeholders so gtdx lint --publish failed on a freshly scaffolded project.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.95 or later, with the wasm32-wasip2 target: rustup target add wasm32-wasip2
• cargo-component: cargo install --locked cargo-component
• gtdx 1.2.8 or newer (installed below)

gtdx new checks all three before it writes a single file, so a missing tool is reported up front rather than at your first build.

Build and publish an extension

1. Install the CLI. This downloads a prebuilt binary — no compile:

   cargo binstall greentic-extension-sdk-cli
   gtdx --version

   Prefer a manual download? Every release archive holds the binary one directory deep, named after the asset, so extract from that path:

   TAG=v1.2.8
   TARGET=aarch64-apple-darwin        # swap for your platform
   curl -L -o gtdx.tgz \
     "https://github.com/greenticai/greentic-designer-sdk/releases/download/$TAG/gtdx-$TAG-$TARGET.tgz"
   tar -xzf gtdx.tgz
   chmod +x "gtdx-$TAG-$TARGET/gtdx"
   mv "gtdx-$TAG-$TARGET/gtdx" ~/.cargo/bin/

2. Scaffold a project. Pick the kind that matches the surface you are implementing:

   gtdx new my-ext --kind design --yes
   cd my-ext

   --yes resolves everything from flags and defaults, which is what you want in scripts and CI. Prefer to be asked instead? Run gtdx new with no arguments — see Scaffold with the wizard below.

   Curious what just got written? What gtdx new Generates walks every file — which three you edit, and which are regenerated on each build.

   --kind wasm-component is the one kind that needs an extra flag: it wraps an already-published component, so it needs that component’s digest-pinned OCI reference. Omit it and the scaffold writes a placeholder that gtdx lint --publish refuses:

   gtdx new my-node --kind wasm-component \
     --component-ref oci://ghcr.io/greenticai/component/component-my-node@sha256:461c6a68…

3. Build, pack, and install locally. This is the inner loop:

   gtdx dev --once

   It rebuilds the component, packs dist/<name>-<version>.gtxpack, and installs it into your local dev registry. Drop --once to watch the source tree and repeat on every save.

   The pack carries a manifest.json integrity ledger — a sha256 of every entry — which the runtime verifies at install.

4. Lint before you publish. Two levels:

   gtdx lint --dir .              # cross-field invariants
   gtdx lint --publish --dir .    # also enforces the publish-only rules

   --publish adds E_SHA256_ZERO, which rejects placeholder digests. A scaffold that has been through gtdx dev --once passes: the packer fills in the real digest of the wasm it just produced.

5. Create a signing key, once, and keep it out of the repo:

   gtdx keygen --out my-key.pem   # PKCS8 PEM ed25519, mode 0600

6. Publish. Dry-run first — it needs no account and does everything except the registry write:

   gtdx publish --dry-run --sign --key my-key.pem
   gtdx publish --sign --key my-key.pem

   To publish to the public store rather than your local registry, authenticate first with gtdx login and pass --registry greentic-store. The store is built in — you do not need gtdx registries add for it.

publish takes no positional path

gtdx publish reads the project directory from --manifest (default ./Cargo.toml). Passing a trailing path — gtdx publish --manifest ./x/Cargo.toml ./x — exits with unexpected argument.

Scaffold with the wizard

Run gtdx new with no arguments on a terminal and it prompts for everything instead. The wizard is the same code path as the flags — it just asks first, and every answer has a default you can accept with Enter:

$ gtdx new
gtdx new — interactive wizard (press Enter to accept defaults)

Project name (kebab-case): wizard-demo
Extension kind:
> design          Designer/agentic tools (default)
  mcp             MCP router (wasix:mcp/router) — usable as flow node + agentic tool
  provider        Messaging/event provider
  wasm-component  Generic WASM flow component
  llm             LLM provider extension
  bundle          Bundle extension
  deploy          Deploy target extension
Extension id (reverse-DNS) [greentic.wizard-demo]:
Version [0.1.0]:
Author [bimapangestu28]:
License (SPDX id) [Apache-2.0]:

About to scaffold:
  name     wizard-demo
  kind     design
  id       greentic.wizard-demo
  version  0.1.0
  author   bimapangestu28
  license  Apache-2.0
Create this extension? [Y/n]

Nothing is written until you answer that last prompt, so it is safe to walk through and back out. The id defaults to greentic.<name>, and the author comes from your git config user.name.

Two details worth knowing:

• Flags become the defaults. gtdx new my-ext --wizard pre-fills the name and still asks the rest, which is handy when you know some answers but not all. --wizard also forces the wizard even when you passed enough flags to skip it.
• Choosing mcp adds a prompt. The wizard offers to seed the extension from an OpenAPI spec, and asks for the spec path if you accept.

The wizard needs a terminal. Without one — in CI, or when stdin is a pipe — gtdx new with no name fails rather than hanging, and tells you to pass a name or use --yes.

Publishing with prompts

gtdx publish has the same option, and it is the friendlier way in while you are still learning the flags:

gtdx publish --wizard

It asks for the registry, then the mode — publish for real, dry-run, or verify-only — then a version override, whether to sign (and where the key comes from: file, key id, or env var), the trust policy, and whether to overwrite an existing version. It prints the full summary and asks Proceed? before anything is uploaded.

Left to itself, publish keeps its scripted defaults — the wizard is strictly opt-in, so existing CI invocations are unaffected.

Testing while you develop

Three layers, fastest first. Most of your testing belongs in the first one.

Layer	Command	What it proves
Unit, on the host	cargo test	Your logic is right. Milliseconds — no WASM, no Designer.
Full gate	./ci/local_check.sh	fmt + clippy + tests + the wasm actually builds.
Integration	gtdx dev --once	It packs and installs. Not that it behaves — that is the layer above.

The guest exports are plain Rust functions, so a host test calls them directly. No harness, no runtime:

#[cfg(test)]
mod tests {
    use super::*;

    #[test]
    fn echo_returns_its_arguments() {
        let out = <Component as tools::Guest>::invoke_tool(
            "echo".to_string(),
            r#"{"message":"hi"}"#.to_string(),
        )
        .expect("echo is implemented");
        assert!(out.contains("echoed"));
    }
}

Since 1.2.8 the scaffold ships tests like this for design, bundle, deploy and provider — covering the error paths too, not just the happy one. Extend them rather than deleting them: ci/local_check.sh runs cargo test, so an empty test module makes that step green while verifying nothing.

Build once before your first cargo test

cargo test needs src/bindings.rs, which is generated rather than committed. In a fresh clone, run gtdx dev --once (or cargo component build) first, or the test build fails with cannot find export in bindings — which reads like a broken project rather than a missing step.

Testing code that calls the host

For logic that reaches http, secrets, state, logging or translation, the SDK publishes in-memory mocks:

[dev-dependencies]
greentic-extension-sdk-testing = "1.2.8"

use greentic_extension_sdk_testing::mock_host::{MockHttpClient, MockLogger};

They are ordinary objects — MockHttpClient, MockSecretsBackend, MockLogger, MockTranslator, MockBroker — not automatic implementations of the generated import traits. They help when your code takes the host dependency as a parameter rather than calling the binding directly. Structuring it that way is what keeps the logic testable on the host at all.

Check what you built

gtdx verify dist/my-ext-0.1.0.gtxpack

Without a trusted key this reports integrity only: the pack is self-consistent and signed, but the publisher is not authenticated. Pass --trusted-key to verify who signed it. The tool is deliberate about the distinction — an unauthenticated signature is not the same as a verified one.

To inspect an installed extension:

gtdx list                     # everything installed, grouped by kind
gtdx info greentic.my-ext     # metadata for one
gtdx doctor                   # toolchain, registries, credentials, installed extensions

gtdx doctor exits non-zero when it finds real problems. It groups failures by cause and summarises the extensions that pass; add --verbose for the full per-extension listing.

Every kind

All eight scaffold, build, lint, sign, publish, and install:

--kind	What it is
design	A designer extension — nodes, tools, and validation surfaces
bundle	Bundle-level assets and behaviour
deploy	A deployment target
provider	Messaging and event providers
wasm-component	Wraps an already-published component as a palette node
llm	An LLM backend
mcp	A wasix:mcp/router component — flow-capable, addressable as dw.mcp.<id>
addon	An infrastructure workload (Qdrant, Redis, Postgres, …) a flow depends on — see Addon Extensions

Tipp

--kind mcp can be generated from an OpenAPI spec: gtdx new --kind mcp --from-openapi ./api.yaml weatherapi. It shells out to greentic-mcp-gen and auto-authors describe.json, including network permissions derived from the spec’s servers.

When the extension does not show up

A freshly built extension that installs cleanly can still be invisible in Designer. In order of likelihood:

The Designer is older than the contract. gtdx scaffolds against greentic.ai/v2, which a Designer below 1.2.0 screens out at boot — the extension never reaches /api/extensions, and nothing in the logs points at the version. See Designer Compatibility.

The Designer binary is older than its version string. This one is worth knowing because the version number will not tell you. A Designer built from a checkout embeds whichever greentic-extension-sdk-contract it was compiled against, and that is what actually decides which manifests it can parse — regardless of what --version reports. A binary that predates the compat field rejects every v2 manifest with:

json: unknown field `compat`, expected one of `$schema`, `apiVersion`, `kind`,
`metadata`, `engine`, `capabilities`, `runtime`, `execution`, `contributions`, `signature`

engine in that list is the tell: it is the v1 shape, and gtdx lint forbids engine precisely because compat replaced it. Check what the binary actually contains rather than what it claims:

strings $(which greentic-designer) | grep -o 'greentic-extension-sdk-contract-[0-9][^/]*' | sort -u

A 0.4.x result means the binary is from before the v2 contract, whatever its --version says. Rebuild or reinstall the Designer.

doctor cannot catch this one

gtdx doctor’s Designer-compatibility check compares min_designer_version against greentic-designer --version. When the version string does not reflect the contract the binary implements, doctor reports the extension as loadable and the Designer still refuses it. Treat that check as a version sanity check, not proof that the manifest will parse.

The Designer reads only ~/.greentic. It ignores GREENTIC_HOME, and there is no flag to point it elsewhere — so an extension installed into an isolated home will not be seen. Install into the default home when you want the Designer to pick it up.

Next

• Writing Extensions — what to put in describe.json and the component
• describe.json Manifest — the full field reference
• Publishing Extensions — signing, trust policies, and the store
• gtdx CLI — every command and flag