AW5 tracks the names of all the element classes that have been used. By including a recognizable plugin name in the full class name, we can then identify the minimum required set of plugins needed. Of course, we would exclude from consideration all classes whose names begin with org.agilewiki.kernel. :-)
A simple convention would be to require the use of a package name ending with "plugin", e.g. org.agilewiki.baseplugin. Validation would occur after loading all the plugins.
Bill