---
title: Plugin tooling
description: We recommend that you kick-start your plugin by generating it with the Kibana Plugin Generator. Run the following in the Kibana repo, and you will be...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/extend/kibana/plugin-tooling
products:
  - Kibana
---

# Plugin tooling
### Automatic plugin generator

We recommend that you kick-start your plugin by generating it with the [Kibana Plugin Generator](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/tree/master/packages/kbn-plugin-generator). Run the following in the Kibana repo, and you will be asked a couple of questions, see some progress bars, and have a freshly generated plugin ready for you to play with in Kibana's `plugins` folder.
```shell
node scripts/generate_plugin
```


### Plugin location

The Kibana directory must be named `kibana`, and your plugin directory should be located in the root of `kibana` in a `plugins` directory, for example:
```shell
.
└── kibana
    └── plugins
        ├── foo-plugin
        └── bar-plugin
```


## Build plugin distributable

<warning>
  Kibana distributable is not shipped with `@kbn/optimizer` anymore. You need to pre-build your plugin for use in production.
</warning>

You can leverage [@kbn/plugin-helpers](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/packages/kbn-plugin-helpers) to build a distributable archive for your plugin. The package transpiles the plugin code, adds polyfills, and links necessary js modules in the runtime. You don’t need to install the `plugin-helpers` dependency. If you created the plugin using `node scripts/generate_plugin` script, `package.json` is already pre-configured. To build your plugin run within your plugin folder:
```shell
yarn build
```

It will output a`zip` archive in `kibana/plugins/my_plugin_name/build/` folder.

## Install a plugin from archive

See [How to install a plugin](/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/kibana/kibana-plugins#install-plugin).

## Run Kibana with your plugin in dev mode

If your plugin isn’t server only and contains `ui` in order for Kibana to pick the browser bundles you need to run `yarn dev --watch` in the plugin root folder at a dedicated terminal.
Then, in a second terminal, run `yarn start` at the Kibana root folder. Make sure Kibana found and bootstrapped your plugin by:
```shell
[INFO ][plugins-system.standard] Setting up […] plugins: […, myPluginName, …]
```