Zsh Antigen¶

ID: antigen
Home page: https://github.com/zsh-users/antigen
Version requirement: >= 2
Platforms: 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS
Operations: installed · upgrade_all · remove
purl types: pkg:antigen
CLI name: zsh
Forced environment: NO_COLOR=1 · SHELL_SESSIONS_DISABLE=1
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: zsh-based
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/antigen.py

Antigen is a plugin manager for Zsh.

Bundles are declared in the user’s .zshrc with antigen bundle calls, then cloned under $ADOTDIR. Packages are identified by the short owner/repo name Antigen reports, which is the id mpm keys them on.

Caution

antigen is a shell function, not a standalone binary: it is defined by sourcing an antigen.zsh file, so it cannot serve as the manager’s CLI. Every invocation is therefore wrapped in zsh -c. Zsh is the binary mpm executes, and Antigen’s own presence is established by the version probe.

Unlike its siblings, Antigen documents no canonical install path, so antigen_source_path() can only guess at the conventional ones. A user who sources it from elsewhere leaves the manager unavailable.

Caution

No install: Antigen materializes exactly the bundle set the user’s own .zshrc declares. antigen bundle clones and loads a bundle for the current shell only, writing nothing back, so a package installed through mpm would vanish with the process. Installing one for real would mean mpm editing the user’s .zshrc, which is configuration mpm does not own.

Note

No outdated: Antigen compares nothing against its remotes short of performing the update. upgrade --all still works, and mpm auto-skips the operation.

Documentation: antigen.

What `mpm` adds to `antigen`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not antigen alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover antigen alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `antigen` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know antigen: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `antigen`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`zsh -c 'source ~/antigen.zsh && antigen list --simple'`	`mpm --antigen installed`
Upgrade everything	`antigen update`	`mpm --antigen upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`antigen purge zsh-users/zsh-completions --force`	`mpm remove pkg:antigen/zsh-users/zsh-completions`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported
`installed`	✓
`outdated`
`orphans`
`search`
`install`
`upgrade`
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `antigen`¶

Deselect antigen for a single run with --no-antigen, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
antigen = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every antigen call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.antigen]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template antigen prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around antigen, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --antigen dump antigen.toml, then mpm restore antigen.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --antigen sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Zsh Antigen’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (clones a Git branch or tag, no release feed)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Upstream Git clones
Retraction: None: a plugin is cloned straight from its upstream repository, so withdrawing a bad revision is its author force-pushing, retagging or deleting it themselves. No index sits in between
Publish date: ❌ a commit or tag date is set by the author and freely rewritable

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ zsh version
Antigen v2.2.3 (0554db1)
Revision date: 2026-07-14 16:52:45 +0100

and extracted with:

r"Antigen\s+v?(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Zsh Antigen well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ zsh -c 'source ~/antigen.zsh && antigen list --simple'
zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting
zsh-users/zsh-completions
zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --antigen installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.7.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Add the Antigen Zsh plugin manager with installed, upgrade and remove support. It declares no install: antigen bundle loads a bundle for the current shell only, writing nothing back.