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Developers

This section explains how NeoTavern is built and how you can extend it with plugins, themes, and provider adapters.

What This Section Covers​

The developer documentation is split into four groups:

  • Architecture — the monorepo layout, the approved technology stack, and the responsibility of every workspace package.
  • Prompt pipeline — the fixed set of stages that turns a chat into a provider request, including instruct formats, tokenization, and context shifting.
  • Data & Storage — how NeoTavern stores structured data in SQLite, how files and images are handled on disk, and how backups work.
  • Extending NeoTavern — the Plugin SDK, the Theme SDK, provider adapters, the generated API reference, and the desktop shell.

Where to Start​

Start with the Architecture Overview if you want to understand the shape of the codebase, or jump straight to the Prompt Pipeline if you are working on generation behavior.

Data Layer​

The Data & Storage section covers the SQLite database, the file system layout, and the backup model. It is the reference for anything that persists data.

Extending NeoTavern​

NeoTavern is extended in four ways:

  • Plugin SDK — plugins with a manifest, permissions, frontend and backend APIs, lifecycle hooks, and sandboxing.
  • Theme SDK — themes built from design tokens, component skins, and shell layouts.
  • Providers — provider adapters that implement the unified adapter contract.
  • Legacy compatibility — the compatibility layer for SillyTavern-era plugins and scripts.

The API Reference is generated from the SDK sources by TypeDoc during every site build, so its member pages always match the published packages.

Desktop​

The Desktop section documents the Tauri 2 shell, the Node.js sidecar, and how installers and portable builds are packaged.