What Are Nx Plugins?

Nx plugins help developers use a tool or framework with Nx. They allow the plugin author who knows the best way to use a tool with Nx to codify their expertise and allow the whole community to reuse those solutions.

For example, plugins can accomplish the following:

Configure Nx cache settings for a tool. The @nx/webpack plugin can automatically configure the inputs and outputs for a build task based on the settings in the webpack.config.js file it uses.
Update tooling configuration when upgrading the tool version. When Storybook 7 introduced a new format for their configuration files, anyone using the @nx/storybook plugin could automatically apply those changes to their repository when upgrading.
Set up a tool for the first time. With the @nx/playwright plugin installed, you can use the @nx/playwright:configuration code generator to set up Playwright tests in an existing project.
Run a tool in an advanced way. The @nx/js plugin's @nx/js:tsc executor combines Nx's understanding of your repository with Typescript's native batch mode feature to make your builds even more performant.