What is a Plugin?

Gatsby plugins are Node.js packages that implement Gatsby APIs. For larger, more complex sites, plugins let you modularize your site customizations into site-specific functionality.

One of the best ways to add functionality to Gatsby is through our plugin system. Gatsby is designed to be extensible, which means plugins are able to extend and modify just about everything Gatsby does.

Of the many possibilities, plugins can:

• add external data or content (e.g. your CMS, static files, a REST API) to your Gatsby GraphQL data
• transform data from other formats (e.g. Markdown, YAML, CSV) to JSON objects
• add third-party services (e.g. Google Analytics, Instagram) to your site
• add bundled, pre-configured functionality with themes
• do anything you can dream up!