Document that rpk plugins do not upgrade with rpk

[JakeSCahill]

What

Adds an "Upgrade rpk plugins" section to the Install or Update rpk page: plugins are separate binaries, upgrading rpk never upgrades them, rpk plugin list --local shows what's installed, and each plugin has its own upgrade command. A NOTE covers the one nuance that trips people: some plugins (Connect) self-install the latest on first functional use, but never self-update afterwards.

Evidence

Every statement is empirically verified (full test log and reproduction steps in the Jira): a plugin pinned at ai 0.2.30 survived an rpk v26.1.12 → v26.2.1 binary upgrade untouched, stayed at 0.2.30 across invocations through the new rpk, and moved to 0.2.34 only when rpk ai upgrade ran. rpk connect run on a clean setup downloaded latest (4.103.1) on first use and did not re-check afterwards.

Placement

Inside the tag::single-source[] region, so the cloud-docs rpk-install.adoc stub (a pure include) inherits the section with no change needed in that repo. Companion one-line fixes for the plugin-specific pages: rp-connect-docs and adp-docs PRs linked from the Jira.

Jira

Resolves DOC-2417.

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 936ec466-b896-4094-a5ac-b8a6e0b6ffe8

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 62d6494 and 494c467.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• modules/get-started/pages/rpk-install.adoc

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Adds an “Upgrade rpk plugins” section to the rpk installation documentation. It explains that plugins are separate binaries with independent versions, shows how to list installed plugins, documents how to upgrade rpk connect, and notes that first-use installation does not provide automatic updates afterward.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~2 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• redpanda-data/docs#1877: Updates documentation for independently versioned rpk plugin installation and upgrade behavior.

Suggested reviewers: feediver1

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely states that rpk plugins do not upgrade when rpk upgrades.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description explains the change, evidence, placement, and Jira link, but it omits the template's preview and checks sections.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch doc-2417-plugin-upgrades

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