The plugin boundary matters more than the number of plugins. I’d limit the core to request normalization, ordered middleware execution, cancellation, and observability. Each plugin would have a versioned manifest with declared capabilities and compatibility ranges.

Run third-party plugins out of process or in WASM so a panic, timeout, or dependency conflict can’t take down the gateway. A small conformance suite using recorded provider responses would also make API changes safer.

For prompt-facing plugins, Wordfully can tighten the wording and remove ambiguity before requests enter the gateway.