> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://velas.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Add VelaBoard to Your Spigot Plugin Project

> Add VelaBoard as a Maven or Gradle dependency, configure your plugin.yml to declare it, and verify the API is ready before use.

VelaBoard is a Spigot plugin that exposes a Java API for managing scoreboards, sidebars, and teams. This page walks you through adding VelaBoard as a compile-time dependency so your plugin can call its API, and configuring your server environment correctly.

## Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

* **Java 17 or later**
* **Spigot or Paper 1.20 or later**
* **Maven or Gradle** as your build system

## Add the dependency

<CodeGroup>
  ```xml pom.xml theme={null}
  <dependency>
      <groupId>io.github.velahere</groupId>
      <artifactId>velaboard</artifactId>
      <version>1.0.1</version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
  </dependency>
  ```

  ```kotlin build.gradle.kts theme={null}
  dependencies {
      compileOnly 'io.github.velahere:velaboard:1.0.1'
  }
  ```
</CodeGroup>

The scope is `provided` (Maven) or `implementation` (Gradle) because VelaBoard runs as a separate plugin on your server — you compile against it, but you do not bundle it into your own JAR.

## Declare the plugin dependency

VelaBoard must be installed as a plugin on your server. You also need to declare it in your `plugin.yml` so Bukkit loads VelaBoard before your plugin starts.

```yaml plugin.yml theme={null}
depend: [VelaBoard]
```

<Note>
  Without this `depend` entry, your plugin may load before VelaBoard, causing `NoClassDefFoundError` or a null handler when you first call the API.
</Note>

## Verify the API is ready

<Tip>
  Call `ScoreboardAPI.isInitialized()` before using any part of the API. If it returns `false`, VelaBoard has not finished loading — wait for a Bukkit event such as `ServerLoadEvent` or verify that your `plugin.yml` dependency is declared correctly.
</Tip>