The Consulo provides the concept of actions. An action is a class derived from AnAction, whose actionPerformed() method is called when its menu item or toolbar button is selected.

Actions are the most common way for a user to invoke the functionality of your plugin. An action can be invoked from a menu or a toolbar, using a keyboard shortcut or the Help | Find Action... lookup.

Actions are organized into groups, which, in turn, can contain other groups. A group of actions can form a toolbar or a menu. Subgroups of the group can form submenus of a menu.

The user can customize all registered actions via Menus and Toolbars settings.

Registering Actions

Actions are registered using the @ActionImpl annotation. The id parameter specifies a unique identifier for the action, and the parents parameter declares where the action appears in the menu hierarchy using @ActionParentRef and @ActionRef:

@ActionImpl(id = "MyAction", parents = @ActionParentRef(@ActionRef(id = "ToolsMenu")))
public class MyAction extends AnAction {
    @Override
    public void actionPerformed(@Nonnull AnActionEvent e) {
        // action logic
    }
}

Action groups can use the children parameter of @ActionImpl to declare their child actions.

Please see Action System on how to create and register actions in the IDE.