The manual clearly uses curly braces for plot.add’s body.
#import "@preview/cetz:0.4.0"
#import "@preview/cetz-plot:0.1.2": plot
#cetz.canvas({
plot.plot(size: (12, 10), {
plot.add(domain: (1.5, 2.5), x => calc.pow(x, x))
plot.add-hline(7)
})
})

