Claude Code Plugins Guide: Install, Build and Share

You’ve written a few skills, a reviewer subagent and a formatting hook. Now a teammate wants them, and so does your other repo. Copying folders around gets old fast. Plugins solve this: a plugin bundles skills, subagents, hooks and MCP servers into one unit that installs with a single command and updates from a marketplace.

This guide covers installing plugins, picking good ones, and building and sharing your own. Commands are verified against the official Claude Code plugin docs as of October 2026.

What a plugin is

A Claude Code plugin is a directory of components, usually with a manifest at .claude-plugin/plugin.json. The components can include:

• Skills (skills/<name>/SKILL.md), run as /plugin-name:skill-name
• Agents (agents/*.md), subagent definitions
• Hooks (hooks/hooks.json), same shape as hooks in settings
• MCP servers (.mcp.json)
• Legacy commands (commands/*.md), the older flat-file form of skills
• A hooks module written in JavaScript (a plugin with one is called a mod)

A marketplace is a catalog: a repository or directory with .claude-plugin/marketplace.json listing plugins and where to fetch them. It isn’t a hosted store.

Installing plugins

From Anthropic’s official marketplace

Claude Code adds Anthropic’s official marketplace, claude-plugins-official, the first time you start an interactive terminal session. Open the plugin manager:

/plugin

Browse the Discover tab, or install directly:

/plugin install commit-commands@claude-plugins-official

From your shell, without opening a session:

claude plugin install commit-commands@claude-plugins-official

On a fresh machine where no interactive session has run yet, add the marketplace first:

claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official

You can also browse plugins on the web at claude.com/marketplace; its Claude Code button copies the install command.

From other marketplaces

Add a marketplace once, then install by name:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

Marketplace sources can be a GitHub owner/repo (append #v1.2.0 to pin a tag), any git URL, a local path starting with ./, or a hosted marketplace.json URL.

Install scopes

Scope	Enabled for	Stored in
User	You, in every project on this computer	Your user settings
Project	Everyone in the repo	.claude/settings.json (committed)
Local	You, in this repo only	Local settings

Project scope enables the plugin for collaborators, but each still installs it on their own machine (claude plugin install <name>@<marketplace> --scope project). Plugins installed at user scope in the terminal are also available in the desktop app’s local sessions and the VS Code extension. Cloud sessions at claude.ai/code don’t load your local plugins.

Managing installed plugins

claude plugin list
claude plugin disable formatter@your-org
claude plugin enable formatter@your-org
claude plugin uninstall formatter@your-org --scope project
claude plugin update formatter@your-org
claude plugin details formatter

claude plugin details shows the plugin’s always-on token cost and which components contribute most. In /plugin, the Installed tab groups plugins you haven’t used recently.

What an enabled plugin costs

An enabled plugin is part of every session, not only the ones where you use it:

• Context: each skill, agent and command Claude can invoke on its own keeps its name and description in context every turn.
• Processes: its MCP servers run and its hooks fire.
• Permissions: whatever it runs, it runs as you.

Install deliberately, and disable what you don’t use.

Plugins worth knowing

Anthropic’s official marketplace includes, among others:

Plugin	What it does (per its manifest)
commit-commands	Commands for committing, pushing and creating pull requests
feature-dev	Feature workflow with agents for exploration, architecture and review
code-review	PR review using multiple specialised agents with confidence scoring
pr-review-toolkit	Review agents for comments, tests, error handling, types and simplification
security-guidance	Security warnings on edits and diff review for Claude-generated code
hookify	Create hooks to prevent unwanted behaviours
claude-md-management	Audit and maintain CLAUDE.md files
plugin-dev	Toolkit for building plugins, agents, hooks and MCP integrations
mcp-server-dev	Scaffold a new MCP server
skill-creator	Create and evaluate skills
Language servers	typescript-lsp, pyright-lsp, gopls-lsp, rust-analyzer-lsp and more

Third-party vendors also publish plugins there, including GitHub, Context7, Playwright, Linear and others. Community collections live in their own marketplaces; for example the Superpowers skills library and Anthropic’s public skills repository, which provides skill-creator and the document skills. Browse reviewed options, each with its install command, in our Claude Code plugins directory.

Building your own plugin

1. Create the structure

mkdir -p my-first-plugin/.claude-plugin
mkdir -p my-first-plugin/skills/hello

2. Write the manifest

my-first-plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json:

{
  "name": "my-first-plugin",
  "description": "A greeting plugin to learn the basics",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "author": {
    "name": "Your Name"
  }
}

name is required, has no spaces, and becomes the prefix for every skill and agent. Setting version pins users to that version until you change it.

3. Add a skill

my-first-plugin/skills/hello/SKILL.md:

---
name: hello
description: Greet the user with a friendly message
disable-model-invocation: true
---

Greet the user warmly and ask how you can help them today.

4. Validate and run

claude plugin validate ./my-first-plugin
claude --plugin-dir ./my-first-plugin

Then, in the session:

/my-first-plugin:hello

When you edit files during the session, run /reload-plugins to pick up changes.

Plugin layout rules

Location	Contents
.claude-plugin/plugin.json	The manifest (only this file goes in .claude-plugin/)
skills/	One <name>/SKILL.md folder per skill
agents/	One Markdown file per subagent
hooks/hooks.json	{"hooks": { ... }} with the same shape as settings
.mcp.json	MCP server definitions
commands/	Legacy flat command files

The most common mistake is putting components inside .claude-plugin/. They won’t load there.

Two plugin-specific details: plugin subagents ignore the hooks, mcpServers and permissionMode frontmatter fields for security (ship hooks in hooks/hooks.json and servers in .mcp.json instead), and skills can reference bundled files with ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}.

Convert an existing setup

If you already have .claude/skills/, .claude/agents/ and hooks in settings, move them under the plugin root (skills/, agents/, hooks/hooks.json). Remember the names change: /deploy becomes /your-plugin:deploy.

For a guided build, install Anthropic’s plugin-dev plugin, which adds skills and agents for writing and validating components.

Sharing a plugin

Three options, from lightest to broadest:

1. Send it directly. Share the folder or a .zip; recipients load it with --plugin-dir.
2. Your own marketplace. Create a repo with .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (full walkthrough: build a team plugin marketplace):

{
  "name": "my-marketplace",
  "description": "Plugins for my team",
  "owner": {
    "name": "Your Name"
  },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "my-first-plugin",
      "source": "./plugins/my-first-plugin",
      "description": "A greeting plugin to learn the basics"
    }
  ]
}

Teammates run /plugin marketplace add your-org/your-repo, then /plugin install my-first-plugin@my-marketplace, and receive your updates.

3. Anthropic’s directory. Submit it for review; once accepted, people can add it on claude.ai and in Cowork, and it reaches Claude Code through their account.

Organisations can allowlist or block marketplaces and force-install plugins through managed settings.

Trust and security

A plugin can run code on your machine with your privileges (hooks, MCP servers, mods) and inject instructions into Claude’s context (skills, agents). Before installing:

• prefer Anthropic’s marketplaces or publishers you trust;
• read hooks/hooks.json, .mcp.json and any scripts;
• remember that auto-update can change files after you reviewed them;
• disable or uninstall plugins you stop using.

Plugins as your Claude kit

A plugin is the natural endpoint of a Claude kit: the packaged, versioned form of your skills, subagents, hooks and MCP servers. Commercial kits such as Agentkit.best take a different, larger-scale approach to the same idea; see Agentkit.best vs a DIY Claude kit. New to all this? Start with Getting started with Claude Code.