[M-Hassan-Raza]

Follow-up to the focused CLI fixes suggested in #3878.

Discover plugins after parsing the conversion policy, include picture-description engines in the plugin listing, and show each provider's distribution name. Fill default format options and apply the policy before constructing the converter, while preserving existing factory method signatures. Help no longer discovers plugins or lists built-in engine names; the generated CLI reference reflects that change.

230 targeted tests and changed-file checks pass locally. The full model-dependent suite was not run locally.

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Checked commit 8ec4f69f93. The analysis read the diff only. It did not run code from this pull request.

Fixes external plugin discovery in the CLI: moves plugin loading after argument parsing, adds picture-description engines to `--show-external-plugins`, stores each plugin's distribution name in `FactoryMeta`, propagates `allow_external_plugins` to all format options before constructing `DocumentConverter`, and removes module-import-time factory construction that caused `--help` to load plugins.

CI safety: needs maintainer care before you approve CI.

• tests/test_factory_plugins.py: The new `_run_cli` helper calls `subprocess.run` with `sys.executable` and passes `**os.environ` to the subprocess, which exposes all CI environment variables (including any secrets) to the child process.

3 related pull request(s) in the same code

PR	State	Signal	Assessment
#4729	open	changes the same code	related: PR 4729 adds CLI metavar formatting and a `--rapidocr-model-size` option to the same `convert` command. It still depends on the `*_enum_internal` variables that this PR removes. The two PRs modify overlapping lines but solve different problems.
#4560	open	changes the same code	related: PR 4560 adds progress bars to the CLI and touches the same `convert` function, but it does not change plugin discovery logic. The two PRs are independent features that both edit `docling/cli/main.py`.
#3878	closed	referenced as #3878	related: PR 3878 is the earlier closed draft by the same author that this PR explicitly follows up on. Both fix the same plugin-discovery problem, but PR 3878 takes a different approach (a separate `plugin_registry` module and broader `BaseFactory` refactor), while this PR uses a smaller, targeted change. They address the same root cause but are not identical in implementation.

_{The ai:* labels are advisory. They do not approve CI and they do not add tests:full. A new push runs this check again.}

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Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 57.69231% with 11 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
docling/cli/main.py	31.25%	10 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️

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[dolfim-ibm]

The fix is right, and the new subprocess tests in tests/test_factory_plugins.py fail on main for the expected reasons. One change requested before merge.

Apply the plugin policy before building the converter, not after.

The loop that sets allow_external_plugins currently runs on doc_converter.format_to_options after DocumentConverter(...) returns. Because of that, every fake converter in tests/test_cli.py and tests/test_ocr_language.py now needs self.format_to_options = format_options: 15 edits that only exist to support the post-construction mutation.

The CLI already knows the full format list: _expand_from_formats returns list(InputFormat) when --from is not given. So the default options can be filled in and the policy applied on the dict that is passed to the converter:

# Apply the CLI policy to every allowed format, including defaults.
for input_format in from_formats:
    if input_format not in format_options:
        format_options[input_format] = _get_default_option(input_format)
for format_option in format_options.values():
    if format_option.pipeline_options is not None:
        format_option.pipeline_options.allow_external_plugins = allow_external_plugins

doc_converter = DocumentConverter(
    allowed_formats=from_formats,
    format_options=format_options,
)

The behavior stays the same: DocumentConverter.__init__ calls _get_default_option for each missing format anyway, and FormatOption.set_optional_field_default fills pipeline_options at creation. The fakes then receive a larger format_options dict. The existing assertions only read specific keys (PDF, IMAGE, AUDIO, VIDEO) and none checks that a key is absent, so the self.format_to_options = format_options edits in both test files can be reverted. test_cli_plugin_discovery still covers the default-format case end to end.

[M-Hassan-Raza]

@dolfim-ibm Please check now should be good hopefully