Today PlugDash ships with eight plugins for EmDash. All MIT, all on npm, all installed on this site. If a plugin works here, it works for you.

What PlugDash is

PlugDash is a plugin catalog for EmDash, the open-source CMS built on Astro and Cloudflare. Each plugin in the catalog solves a small, specific problem your blog has on day one - reading time, share buttons, a heart counter, short links, a table of contents, callouts, and publish-triggered rebuilds.

Every plugin ships with a companion Astro component. You install the plugin, add one import to your layout, and your readers see the result. No configuration needed to ship something good. Full CSS token customisation when you want to change the look.

The eight launch plugins

@plugdash/readtime calculates reading time on publish. @plugdash/sharepost generates share URLs for X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Bluesky, and email. @plugdash/heartpost is a KV-backed heart counter. @plugdash/shortlink gives every post a short URL. @plugdash/tocgen parses headings and writes a nested table of contents. @plugdash/callout adds info, warning, tip, and danger blocks to the Portable Text editor. @plugdash/engage bundles heart, share, and copy into one component. @plugdash/autobuild fires a deploy hook on publish so the admin becomes the thing that moves the site.

Why the site runs on EmDash

A plugin catalog that does not use its own plugins is not a catalog. It is a brochure. plugdash.dev is an EmDash install with all eight plugins registered and active. The reading time on this post, the engagement bar at the bottom, the table of contents sidebar on desktop, the callout blocks - all of them are live plugins running on this page. The site is the proof.

What's next

The next batch focuses on migration and interop. fromsubstack lets you move a Substack archive into EmDash in one step. tomarkdown and tojson export your EmDash content back out - the anti-lock-in pair. After that: socialcard for auto-generated OG images and insights for native, no-external-script analytics.

Ship something small. Ship it open. Ship it running on itself.