refactor(appkit): add defineManifest to remove manifest casts

[MarioCadenas]

What

Introduces defineManifest() in the registry so plugins stop hand-casting their JSON manifests. All 10 plugins now declare:

staticmanifest=defineManifest<"my-plugin">(manifest);

instead of static manifest = manifest as PluginManifest<...> (agents needed the uglier as unknown as PluginManifest).

It's also exported from @databricks/appkit and emitted by appkit plugin create, so external plugins get the same validated, cast-free path.

Why

The cast was unavoidable with a raw .json import:

• TS widens every JSON field to string, but PluginManifest.resources[].type is the nominal ResourceType enum — a structural string never assigns to it.
• Multi-resource plugins (only agents today) infer a heterogeneous union for resources, which a plain as also rejects (hence agents' as unknown as).

So the escape hatch wasn't a plugin bug — it was the JSON→type boundary being crossed by assertion in every plugin, with no runtime validation.

How

defineManifest() parses the manifest through the canonical pluginManifestSchema (Zod) and returns the strict type via one audited internal assertion, after parse has confirmed the values are real ResourceType/permission strings. This:

• removes every per-plugin cast (one bridge assertion, centralized),
• adds real runtime validation at module load that the old cast never provided — including the camelCase PLUGIN_NAME_PATTERN,
• preserves the literal plugin name via <TName> (needed — toPlugin derives the typed plugin key from manifest.name; widening to string would collapse the typed registry).

pluginManifestSchema is now exported from shared for the parse.

Public surface

• defineManifest is exported from the @databricks/appkit root so external plugin authors can use it (previously it lived only in the internal registry barrel).
• The appkit plugin create scaffold now emits defineManifest<"name">(manifest) instead of manifest as PluginManifest<...>, so newly scaffolded plugins get runtime validation by default.
• TypeDoc API reference regenerated (new Function.defineManifest page; Variable.agents now shows the restored literal key ToPlugin<..., "agents"> instead of ..., string>).

Verification

• shared + appkit typecheck — clean
• Registry + plugins + plugin-CLI suites — 1311 pass, 1 skipped (every real manifest parses at module load)
• New unit tests: valid pass-through + rejection of unknown resource type, invalid permission, and missing required field
• Scaffold test updated to assert the defineManifest output
• oxlint + oxfmt — clean on changed files (no new warnings vs. main)

Split out of the MLflow-tracing PR (pr/agent-evals-1-tracing), which is where this cast friction first surfaced.

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📦 Bundle size report

Compared against bundle-size-baseline.json (main).

@databricks/appkit

npm tarball (packed): 862 KB (+22 KB) — gzipped download (dist + bin; excludes release-only docs/NOTICE).

dist	raw	gzip
JS (runtime)	899 KB (+30 KB)	311 KB (+8.5 KB)
Type declarations	316 KB (+1.2 KB)	109 KB (+497 B)
Source maps	1.7 MB (+58 KB)	580 KB (+14 KB)
Other	11 KB	3.7 KB
Total	2.9 MB (+89 KB)	1005 KB (+23 KB)

Per-entry composition (own code — deps external (as shipped))

Entry	Initial (gz)	Lazy (gz)	Total (gz)	node_modules (min)	Own code (min)
.	93 KB (+4.9 KB)	2.5 KB	96 KB (+4.9 KB)	external	306 KB (+17 KB)
./beta	54 KB (+5.1 KB)	457 B	54 KB (+5.1 KB)	external	161 KB (+18 KB)
./type-generator	21 KB	0 B	21 KB	external	61 KB

Chunks:

Entry	Chunk	Load	Size (gz)
.	index.js	initial	89 KB
.	utils.js	initial	4.0 KB
.	remote-tunnel-manager.js	lazy	2.5 KB
./beta	beta.js	initial	38 KB
./beta	stream-manager.js	initial	5.8 KB
./beta	wide-event-emitter.js	initial	3.2 KB
./beta	databricks.js	initial	3.0 KB
./beta	configuration.js	initial	2.1 KB
./beta	service-context.js	initial	1.3 KB
./beta	client.js	initial	434 B
./beta	client-options.js	initial	220 B
./beta	supervisor-api.js	lazy	192 B
./beta	databricks.js	lazy	142 B
./beta	index.js	lazy	123 B
./type-generator	index.js	initial	21 KB

@databricks/appkit-ui

npm tarball (packed): 342 KB (-281 B) — gzipped download (dist + bin; excludes release-only docs/NOTICE).

dist	raw	gzip
JS (runtime)	390 KB	130 KB (+1 B)
Type declarations	228 KB (+32 B)	83 KB (+9 B)
Source maps	752 KB (-334 B)	247 KB (-197 B)
CSS	16 KB (-462 B)	3.2 KB (-90 B)
Total	1.4 MB (-764 B)	464 KB (-277 B)

Per-entry composition (consumer bundle — deps bundled, peerDeps external)

Entry	Initial (gz)	Lazy (gz)	Total (gz)	node_modules (min)	Own code (min)
./js	5.3 KB	49 KB	55 KB	208 KB	14 KB
./js/beta	20 B	0 B	20 B	0 B	0 B
./react	432 KB (+127 B)	49 KB	480 KB (+127 B)	1.3 MB	175 KB
./react/beta	1.0 KB	0 B	1.0 KB	0 B	1.9 KB

Chunks:

Entry	Chunk	Load	Size (gz)
./js	index.js	initial	5.2 KB
./js	chunk	initial	120 B
./js	apache-arrow	lazy	49 KB
./js/beta	beta.js	initial	20 B
./react	index.js	initial	430 KB
./react	tslib	initial	2.1 KB
./react	apache-arrow	lazy	49 KB
./react/beta	beta.js	initial	1.0 KB

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gh run download 32349898864 -R databricks/appkit -n appkit-template-0.61.1-pr.495ea7a-refactor-define-manifest-485 -D appkit-pr-485 \
&& unzip -o "appkit-pr-485/appkit-template-0.61.1-pr.495ea7a-refactor-define-manifest-485.zip" -d "appkit-pr-485" \
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