> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.prefect.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# plugins

# `prefect.plugins`

Prefect plugin system.

Provides startup hooks that allow third-party packages to run initialization
code (e.g., set environment variables, configure DB connections) before
Prefect CLI commands, workers, or scripts begin work, plus loaders for the
`prefect.collections` entry point group used by Prefect collection packages.

This module is the stable public surface for the plugin system. Implementation
modules live under `prefect._internal.plugins.*` and may change without notice.

The collection-loader symbols are imported eagerly because they have no extra
dependencies; the pluggy-backed hook system symbols are loaded lazily via
`__getattr__` so that minimal builds (e.g. `prefect-client`) which do not
ship `pluggy` can still `from prefect.plugins import load_prefect_collections`
without a hard ImportError at module load time.