In various QGIS plugin tutorials you are told to use Plugin Builder tool to create a skeleton for your plugin. It is surely helpful as it helps you kickstart your plugin with stuff like UI designer file, auto tests, docs, i18n, scripts and so on.

This QGIS plugin is the complete opposite of a plugin built with Plugin Builder: it is a plugin skeleton cut down to the bare minimum that still results in a valid QGIS plugin. It consists of two files only: a text file with metadata and a Python file with a bit of code.

For educational purposes, it is useful to understand how a very basic plugin could look like.

For practical reasons, it is sometimes useful to create a single purpose plugin with the least amount of extra bells and whistles, so the code that actually does something is not hidden among generated boilerplate code.

1. Create a new python plugin directory

• e.g. Linux ~/.local/share/QGIS/QGIS3/profiles/default/python/plugins/minimal
• e.g. Windows C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\QGIS\QGIS3\profiles\default\python\plugins\minimal

2. Copy metadata.txt and __init__.py to that directory
3. Start QGIS and enable the plugin (menu Plugins > Manager and Install Plugins...)

Now you should see a "Go!" button in your "Plugins" toolbar (make sure it is enabled in menu Settings > Toolbars > Plugins).

The next step is to change the metadata (e.g. plugin title and description) in metadata.txt and start adding your own code to __init__.py. Have fun!