packer/website/content/partials/plugins/how-plugins-work.mdx

## How Plugins Work

Packer plugins are completely separate, standalone applications that the core
of Packer starts and communicates with. Even the components that ship with the
Packer core (core builders, provisioners, and post-processors) are implemented
in a similar way and run as though they are standalone plugins.

These plugin applications aren't meant to be run manually. Instead, Packer core
launches and communicates with them. The next time you run a Packer build,
look at your process list and you should see a handful of `packer-` prefixed
applications running. One of those applications is the core; the rest are
plugins -- one plugin process is launched for each component used in a Packer
build.