title: Plugins category: builds-integration
Features in CKEditor are introduced by plugins. In fact, without plugins CKEditor is an empty API with no use. The builds provided with CKEditor 5 are actually a predefined collection of plugins, put together to satisfy specific needs.
Plugins provided by the CKEditor core team are available in npm (and GitHub too) in form of npm packages. A package may contain one or more plugins (e.g. the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-image packages contains several grannular plugins).
Plugins can be pretty much anything. They’re simply code, initialized by the editor if they’re configured to be loaded. They can use the richness of the CKEditor 5 Framework API to enhance the editor or to better integrate it with your application.
Common use cases for plugins are:
Creating your own plugins is a straightforward task but it requires good knowledge about a few aspects of the CKEditor 5 development environment. The following resources are recommended as a starting point:
A good understanding about the {@link TODO CKEditor 5 Framework} is also very welcome when it comes to creating plugins.
A great way to enhance your builds with additional features is by using plugins created by the community. Such plugins are generally available as npm packages, so a quick search on the “ckeditor5” keyword in npm should work as a starting point.
Once you have plugins to be included, just {@link TODO create a custom build}, configured to include them.