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As your workflows evolve and you gather feedback from users, you may want to refine what a plugin does and where it shows up. Cortex lets you edit any plugin’s configuration, code, and display settings after it’s been registered, so you can iterate without starting over.

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Viewing the plugin in Cortex

  1. From the main sidebar, select Plugins.
  2. Locate the plugin you want to view, then click the Overflow menu.
  3. Select Edit plugin.
  4. In the bottom-right corner, toggle on Dev mode. The Plugin preview uses code running at http://localhost:9000/ui.html.
  5. Click the down arrow next to the toggle.
  6. In the command line, navigate to your scaffolded plugin directory and run yarn dev.
  7. Review the plugin in the Plugin preview.

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Editing a plugin

Users with the Edit Plugins permission can edit plugins.
  1. In your text editor, open the cloned repository for your plugin.
  2. Make any necessary changes.
  3. Save and run yarn build.
  4. Optionally, run yarn dev to preview your changes in Cortex.
  5. Upload or drop the new HTML file into the Upload & preview plugin grid. Cortex automatically deletes the old HTML file and replaces it with the new one.
  6. Review the plugin in the Plugin preview.
  7. Click Save plugin.

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Adding theme-based styling

The react-plugin-ui package includes CSS variables for theme-based styling. These styles adjust to match the brand color you have configured and reflect the light or dark mode settings for your Cortex workspace. The styles are injected via an iframe postMessage request, initiated by the Cortex CortexApi.pluginInit() call. If your plugin needs additional styling beyond what’s available in react-plugin-ui, you can use the Cortex CSS API. Refer to the documentation in the plugin template repository.
Last modified on September 9, 2026