devreload

DevReload — Hot-Reload Plugin System for AutoCAD 2025

DevReload lets you edit, build, and reload AutoCAD .NET plugins without restarting AutoCAD. It uses .NET 8 collectible AssemblyLoadContext to isolate plugins and stream-loads DLLs so your build can rebuild freely while the old plugin runs. The {PREFIX}DEV command builds your project, tears down the old plugin, and loads the new one — all in one step.

You register a plugin by picking its .csproj file; the plugin name is the project-file name. Builds run directly via dotnet build — no Visual Studio instance required. A per-plugin Debug/Release toggle lets you switch build configurations from the management palette.

Git worktree support: DevReload detects worktrees for registered projects and lets you select which worktree to build from via a dropdown in the management palette.

Install as a Claude Code / Codex plugin

DevReload also ships an MCP bridge (Acad.Rpc.Bridge) and the /acd-agentic-dev skill, so an agent (Claude Code or Codex) can drive the full edit → reload → live-test loop directly. The MCP bridge exposes three tool groups:

• acad_* — AutoCAD/Civil 3D process + drawing control: locate installs, launch, attach/detach, list instances, send/post commands, wait for readiness, open/close drawings, quit.
• devreload_* — plugin lifecycle: register, load, reload (build + hot-swap), unload, query state, switch build config and worktree.
• ui_* — UI automation, so an agent can test a plugin's UI, not just drawing state: introspect and drive WPF palettes at the ViewModel level (invoke / set-value / toggle / select via UI Automation peers); enumerate and headlessly click native modal dialogs that have no .NET API (e.g. the COGO-point projection dialog); synthesize mouse input for jigs, grips and OSNAP; and capture inline screenshots scoped to a window, region, WPF element, or WCS box — including frame-by-frame drag bursts to watch a jig animate.

All control flows over a per-instance named pipe (acad-rpc-<pid>), not COM — so you can run multiple AutoCAD/Civil 3D instances at once and drive any of them independently. Every acad_*, devreload_* and ui_* tool takes an optional pid: omit it to use the bound (default) instance, or pass it to target a specific one. acad_wait_pipe is the per-instance readiness gate; acad_list_instances enumerates running instances and their pipe state. (One caveat: the ui_* synthetic-input tools — mouse move/click/drag, key press — drive the one shared OS cursor/foreground, so they're addressable per pid but serialize across instances; the WPF-introspection, dialog and screenshot tools are fully per-instance and parallel-safe.)

Note: this installs the agent-side MCP bridge + skill. The AutoCAD-side DevReload plugin (the palette + commands) is installed separately into AutoCAD — see Installing the AutoCAD plugin.

Claude Code

From any Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add shtirlitsDva/DevReload
/plugin install devreload

The marketplace entry resolves the plugin from the auto-built release branch (kept in sync by GitHub Actions on every master push), which includes the pre-packed MCP bridge — no clone, no .NET SDK, no Pack-Plugin step required. The acad_* / devreload_* MCP tools appear automatically, and the skill becomes invokable as /devreload:acd-agentic-dev.

Codex

Codex needs the bridge built locally because there is no equivalent of Claude Code's marketplace fetch for arbitrary skills + MCP servers.

git clone https://github.com/shtirlitsDva/DevReload
cd DevReload
.\scripts\Install-Codex.ps1

Install-Codex.ps1 runs Pack-Plugin.ps1 (publishing the bridge into ./server/), copies the skill into %USERPROFILE%\.agents\skills\acd-agentic-dev\ (Codex's user-scope skills directory), and registers the MCP server in %USERPROFILE%\.codex\config.toml. If the codex CLI is on PATH it uses codex mcp add; otherwise it appends an idempotent [mcp_servers.devreload] block.

Restart Codex (or reload its config) and the skill is discoverable via /skills, the MCP tools via the usual tool selector.

Local development on the plugin itself

If you're iterating on the bridge or the skill, run .\scripts\Pack-Plugin.ps1 after each change and re-install the plugin pointed at your local checkout. Pack-Plugin does a framework-dependent publish (~5 MB, requires the .NET 8 runtime on consumers); -SelfContained switches it to a ~60 MB self-contained build that bundles the runtime.

Installing the AutoCAD plugin

The AutoCAD-side plugin is the DevReload.dll assembly that provides the DEVRELOAD palette and the generated plugin commands. Install it one of two ways:

• Bundle (autoload): build Release to produce Deploy/DevReload.bundle, then drop that bundle into AutoCAD's ApplicationPlugins folder so it autoloads on startup.