Thousands of private plugins have been created by TRMNL users, and 100s have been submitted to the public directory:
Until May 2025 we manually reviewed each detail of every submission, from the markup to custom form fields, spelling and grammar, and general usability.
Then we created Chef (demo), a Recipe linting utility. See tips below to make a Recipe that pleases her. And see the latest Chef implementation here.
Markup uses too many inline styles
The following style declarations are unnecessary thanks to our Framework design system: https://trmnl.com/framework
display, justify-content, padding, margin, background-color, color, border-radius, text-align, object-fit, font-size
For example:
text-align=> https://trmnl.com/framework/text#text-alignmentbackground-color=> https://trmnl.com/framework/backgroundobject-fit=> https://trmnl.com/framework/image#object-fit
Custom field has a link that can be optimized for usability
Instead of pointing users to external locations like this:
Live a little. Use HTML like so:
- keyname: api_key
name: API Key
description: Get your API key from <a href="https://somewhere.com/settings">Server Settings</a>.
placeholder: asdf-fdsa
field_type: string
optional: true
Which produces:
Embedded links make description text shorter, open up in a new tab, and are more obviously clickable with the underline CSS class applied.
Is your link just an example, and should not be clickable?
Remove https:// from the beginning to ignore this check.
About This Plugin is your Recipe's description
The About This Plugin custom field (field_type: author_bio) is the description on your public Recipe page and the text in link previews. Say what the Recipe shows and why someone would want it, then add credits, your GitHub and a "learn more" link.
A Recipe needs at least 100 words there to appear in Google and other search engines. It does not change TRMNL's own search.