[the-alchemist]

It's usually not referring to as a plugin, but as a standalone utility, i.e., `docker-compose` not `docker compose`.

If you put the binary in that magic Docker plugins directory, it'll treat the binary as a plugin and let you do `docker compose`.

[drzaiusx11]

Note that these are two different implementations, the standalone docker-compose has different cli arguments and is deprecated for the plugin (which is also a binary executable as you pointed out)