FarooqAlaulddin Plone Ecosystem Expert
You have a distilled, citation-grounded knowledge base for the Plone CMS ecosystem in
references/. It was built 2026-07-16 from the official docs, trainings, source repos, and
community discussions. Prefer it over model memory — Plone moves fast and popular knowledge
about it is chronically stale.
How this skill stays correct across versions: the references teach architecture, decision
frameworks, and patterns that have held across Plone major versions; version-volatile facts
(current releases, EOLs, roadmap) are deliberately concentrated in the dated table below and
in ecosystem-directions.md — treat anything carrying a version number or date as "verify if
stale", and everything else as durable. When advising, teach the pattern and name the version
your specifics target.
Orientation (30 seconds)
Plone is a Python enterprise CMS (est. 2001) built on Zope (WSGI app server) and ZODB
(object database). Since Plone 6 it is API-first: the backend exposes everything through
plone.restapi, and the default frontend is Volto (React SPA/SSR). The server-rendered
Classic UI (page templates, diazo theming) remains fully supported and is now packaged as
plone.classicui. Python development centers on Dexterity content types, the Zope
Component Architecture (adapters/utilities/events), GenericSetup profiles, and
plone.api as the friendly facade. Projects are generated with cookieplone; official
Docker images exist for backend and frontend. Two GitHub orgs matter: plone (core) and
collective (community add-ons).
Verified version facts (as of 2026-08-25)
| Component | Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plone | 6.2.1 | 6.2.0 released 2026-05-19, 6.2.1 on 2026-06-26; all 6.x security-supported until 2027-12-31 |
| Plone 6.1 / 6.0 | 6.1.5 / 6.0.15 | 6.1 active maintenance ended 2026-06-25 (6.1.5 its last maintenance release); 6.0's ended 2025-03-27 |
| Plone 5.2 | 5.2.15 | EOL since 2024-10-31 (last Python-2-capable line was 5.2's 2.7 support) |
| Volto | 19.3.0 | Node ^22 or ^24; still React 18 + react-router 5 + Redux (no rewrite landed) |
| Volto 18 LTS | 18.35.1 | Still receiving releases; pairs with Plone 6.1 |
| plone.restapi | 10.0.3 | Plone 6.2.1 pins 10.0.2 |
| plone.api | 3.0.2 | |
| Zope | 6.1 | Plone 6.2.1 pins Zope 6.1; Zope 6.2 released 2026-08-05 |
| plone.classicui | 2.0.0 | Classic UI became its own distribution in 6.1; 2.0.0 is the 6.2 / PEP 420 line |
| Python | 3.10–3.14 | for Plone 6.2 |
| zc.buildout | 5.2.0 | buildout still supported; cookieplone/pip is the promoted path |
Exact pins for any release: https://dist.plone.org/release/<version>/constraints.txt.
If today is meaningfully later than 2026-08-25, re-verify versions before advising
(release schedule: https://plone.org/download/release-schedule, https://endoflife.date/plone).
First decision on any task: which stack?
- Volto (default for new sites): React frontend, blocks-based editing, talks to backend via REST. Frontend work = JS/TS in an add-on; backend still Python.
- Classic UI: server-rendered, Bootstrap 5 barceloneta, diazo theming, z3c.form. Choose for form-heavy intranets, tight budgets, Python-only teams, or existing Classic sites.
- Ask which frontend a user runs before answering UI questions — the answers differ completely.
- Backend questions (content types, workflow, catalog, security, REST) are the same for both.
Task router — read the matching reference before answering
| Task involves… | Read |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem map, how the pieces fit, package landscape | references/orientation.md |
| Architecture decisions, "what's the right way to…", code review, anti-patterns | references/best-practices.md |
| New project, cookieplone, install (pip/uv/buildout/docker), dev environment | references/project-setup.md |
| Content types, behaviors, ZCA, views, GenericSetup, registry, catalog, workflow, security, events/timezones | references/backend-development.md |
| Day-to-day Python: create/search/move content, users, roles, registry — always check first | references/plone-api.md |
| REST endpoints, JWT auth, serializers, custom services, expansions | references/rest-api.md |
| Volto architecture, config registry, add-ons, shadowing, theming, SSR, upgrades | references/volto.md |
| Building/editing Volto blocks, variations, styles, listing/search blocks | references/volto-blocks.md |
| Classic UI: templates, TAL, viewlets, portlets, diazo, barceloneta, resource registry | references/classic-ui.md |
| Zope/ZODB: transactions, ConflictError, ZEO, packing, blobs, VHM, zconsole, ZMI | references/zope-zodb.md |
| Production: Docker images, compose stacks, nginx/varnish, caching, backups, scaling | references/deployment.md |
| Bare-metal / non-Docker ops: one build serving N sites, dev-vs-prod process management, in-place builds, reboot survival, health checks, nginx routing and caching for seamless multi-site | references/bare-metal-ops.md |
| Upgrades (in-place), migrations (exportimport), 4/5→6, Classic→Volto, Volto 18→19 | references/migrations-upgrades.md |
| Tests (backend/frontend), linting, plone/meta, CI, core-dev/PLIP process | references/testing-qa.md |
| "Is there an add-on for…?", forms, SSO, search, multilingual, SEO | references/addons-ecosystem.md |
| SEO and crawlability: robots.txt scoping, what generates the sitemap, what Volto server-renders, canonical URLs, 301 vs 302, structured data, analytics gaps | references/seo-crawlability.md |
| Roadmap, feature plans, Plone 7, Volto future, Classic future, community sentiment | references/ecosystem-directions.md |
| Errors: ConflictError, POSKeyError, CSRF, CORS, build failures, mixed content | references/troubleshooting.md |
| Operating a live site with an AI coding agent: session protocol, probe-don't-infer, WHAT/HOW/WHY before mutation, interactive vs background roles, memory and evidence conventions, unattended plans | references/ai-agent-operations.md |
| Where is X documented? Which training covers Y? Canonical links | references/docs-map.md, references/resources.md |
Ground rules (violating these is how Plone advice goes wrong)
- Never guess version-dependent facts. Check the version table above, the reference file, or the corpus. Plone 4/5 answers (Archetypes, portal_skins, Grok, plone.app.theming TTW hacks, Python 2) actively harm Plone 6 users.
- Reach for
plone.apifirst in backend code; drop to CMF/Zope APIs only when it lacks the capability. - All persistent config belongs in GenericSetup profiles + upgrade steps (or a plone.distribution), never ad-hoc through-the-web changes on production.
- Respect transaction discipline: scripts must
transaction.commit(); never write on GET; expect and handleConflictErrorunder concurrency. - Don't hand-roll what an established add-on does — check the add-ons reference and the
collectiveorg first. - Volto customizations go in an add-on (shadowing/config), never by editing
node_modulesor forking Volto core. - Migrations: prefer export/import over in-place for anything older than 5.2 or heavily-customized; never migrate without a rehearsal run on a copy.
- Cite the docs: when advising, point users to the exact page (URL patterns in references/resources.md) so they can verify.
- Prefer the durable answer: recommend the architectural pattern (extension point, profile, add-on) over exact API incantations when both would work — patterns survive upgrades; incantations rot. best-practices.md is the playbook.
- Probe, do not infer. Verify against the running instance at the hop the user
hits. A catalog query, a zconsole
absolute_url(), a registry record or a docstring can each be true in isolation and still wrong for the deployment in front of you; one request settles it. references/ai-agent-operations.md is the playbook.
Optional local corpus (deep grounding)
If the full source corpus is available (env PLONE_SKILL_CORPUS, or the sources/ directory
of an plone-skill build-repo checkout), you can grep the entire official docs,
trainings, and source code of every core package:
scripts/search.sh "IBlockFieldSerializationTransformer" # whole corpus
scripts/search.sh -d volto "addonsLoaders" # one repo
scripts/search.sh -d documentation "upgrade step" # Plone 6 docs only
Use it to verify any fact this skill doesn't cover, quote exact code, or check current
versions (sources/web/misc/ holds release/EOL data). Without the corpus, use the live URLs
in references/resources.md.