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How-to guide

Plugins and connectors

Nawa reaches outside itself through MCP servers — services and programs that expose tools over the Model Context Protocol. A connector is an MCP server you add on the Connectors tab of Settings; a plugin is a package installed from the sidebar's Plugins catalogue that brings its own MCP server, and sometimes skills and a panel, with it. Both end up as tools Nawa can load into a chat.

Add a connector

Open Settings → Connectors. The list shows every connector with its state and a Sign in button where one is needed.

  • Browse connectors lists the public MCP endpoints of common services — Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, Slack, Jira, Linear, GitHub, Notion, Stripe and others — and one local entry, Chrome control. Choose one; a remote entry needs a sign-in with the service, which Nawa starts for you in the browser. Many services register Nawa as a client on their own; a few ask for an OAuth Client ID of your own, and the entry says so.
  • Add custom connector takes any MCP server: an https:// endpoint with optional headers, or a local command with its arguments. A local connector runs with Nawa's bundled Node, npx, Git and ripgrep on its path.

A connected server lists its tools under its entry. A server that lists its tools but refuses to run them shows Needs authentication until you sign in.

Set what each tool may do

Every tool of a connector has a permission, changed from its entry:

  • Ask first — a card asks each time (see Permissions).
  • Always allow — runs without asking.
  • Blocked — never offered to the model.
  • Automatic (plugins only) — routine observations run, actions that change something ask.

Changing one tool's permission keeps the list open and its filter in place, so several can be set in a row. Your choice on a permission card — Always allow — sets the same thing for the rest of the chat.

Use tools in a chat

A chat starts with Nawa's own tools. Plugin and connector tools are discovered on demand: the model sees a catalogue of what is installed and loads the tools it needs for the task, which keeps every other turn light. You can name the plugin in your request — "use Chrome control to…", "use Desktop Control to…" — when you want a particular one.

Chrome control

Chrome control is Google's Chrome DevTools MCP server, started by Nawa through npx with a pinned version. It opens a Chrome window of its own, with a profile kept under Nawa's data, and drives it: navigating, reading the page as an accessibility tree, clicking, typing, taking screenshots, running scripts. Because it is a real Chrome you can sign in to sites in it once and keep the sessions.

The main model uses Chrome control’s native tools directly, including when a decision model is enabled in Settings. Browser actions do not call Jev or Laya. Each tool keeps its native arguments and returns its observed result through Nawa’s usual permission and content-screening boundaries.

Desktop Control

Desktop Control, the first plugin in the catalogue, drives Windows applications through Cua Driver: it lists windows and controls, reads them, acts on them, and verifies what it did. Installing it downloads the pinned driver and verifies its published hash. Try: "Use Desktop Control to open Calculator, calculate 123 × 456, and verify the displayed result."

Its window picker shows normal application windows and the primary screen. A read-only Windows metadata connection excludes cloaked windows, non-activating overlays and tool windows using operating-system flags, rather than app names. Minimized app windows remain selectable without being restored for a preview. The driver's full window inventory remains available to Nawa's tools. The current driver supports full-screen capture and control on the primary display only.

Select a snapshot, enter an instruction and send it to Nawa. Selection alone does not click or type in the target. Refresh captures new snapshots; the enlarge control captures a larger preview. Before sending, the picker checks that the selected window still exists with the same process and window identity, or reads the primary screen's current dimensions.

Install a plugin

Open Plugins in the sidebar, below Artifacts. The catalogue shows what is available with an install icon on each card; installation shows its download, verification and connection stages, adds the plugin to the tree, and opens its page. Plugins are enabled and disabled from their page; disabling one closes its server.

Add from folder installs a package of your own or a third party's from a local folder. Review the connections it declares before installing; installation copies a versioned snapshot, so editing the folder afterwards changes nothing until you install again. The package format — plugin.json, an optional mcp.json, skills, and an optional panel — is described in PLUGINS.md in the source tree.