How to Use Claude Code Plugins (Install from a Marketplace or Build Your Own)

Anthropic has introduced a plugin system for Claude Code that allows developers to bundle skills, hooks, MCP servers, and other tooling into a single directory installable with one command. The system includes namespacing to avoid collisions, a marketplace for discovery, and commands for managing plugins. Plugins can be installed from official or community marketplaces and scoped to user, project, or global settings.

This is a cross-post — the original and any updates live at broke2builtai.com . My Claude Code setup took months to accrete: a review command here, a formatting hook there, an MCP server for the database, a subagent for QA. Then I started a second project and discovered the setup didn't come with me — it was smeared across four config surfaces in the first repo, and "install my tooling" meant a twenty-minute archaeology dig through my own dotfiles. Plugins are Claude Code's answer to exactly that problem: one directory that bundles all of it, installable with one command. A plugin is a folder with a manifest. Inside it, the same primitives you can already wire up by hand, packaged to travel together: /name invocations, the same format as a /agents hooks/hooks.json .mcp.json , so installing the plugin connects the tools without anyone running claude mcp add Plugins can also carry LSP servers for code intelligence, background monitors, and executables — but the four above are the ones you'll actually package first. The one behavioral difference from hand-wired pieces: namespacing. A skill named hello in a plugin named my-plugin is invoked as /my-plugin:hello , not /hello . That's deliberate — two plugins can both ship a deploy skill without colliding. Your own standalone .claude/ files keep their short names. A marketplace is a catalog — a repo or URL that lists plugins and where to fetch them. Using one is a two-step deal: add the catalog, then install individual plugins from it. Think app store: adding the store installs nothing. Anthropic's official marketplace claude-plugins-official is registered automatically. Run /plugin inside a session and you get a tabbed manager — Discover , Installed , Marketplaces , Errors , cycled with Tab. Browse Discover, hit Enter on a plugin, and the details pane shows what it contains, its context cost in tokens, and a "Will install" inventory before you commit. Or skip the browsing and install directly: /plugin install github@claude-plugins-official For third-party catalogs, add the marketplace first. The community marketplace — where reviewed third-party submissions land, each pinned to a specific commit — is the obvious second stop: /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-community /plugin install some-plugin@claude-community /plugin marketplace add accepts a GitHub owner/repo shorthand, a full git URL include the https:// and the .git , a local directory, or a direct URL to a hosted marketplace.json . Installing prompts you for a scope : .claude/settings.json , so everyone who clones the repo gets itThen activate without restarting: /reload-plugins That's the full loop. The plugin's skills now show up under their namespace — install commit-commands from Anthropic's demo marketplace and you get /commit-commands:commit . The day-to-day commands: /plugin list what's installed, grouped by scope /plugin disable plugin-name@marketplace-name turn off without uninstalling /plugin enable plugin-name@marketplace-name /plugin uninstall plugin-name@marketplace-name /plugin update plugin-name@marketplace-name pull a plugin update /plugin marketplace update marketplace-name refresh a catalog Everything also exists as a shell command claude plugin install formatter@my-marketplace --scope project for scripts and CI. Two things worth knowing before you accumulate a pile: removing a marketplace uninstalls every plugin you got from it, and every enabled plugin adds tokens to every session — claude plugin details <name shows the projected cost, split into always-on and on-invoke. Audit occasionally; the Installed tab literally flags plugins you haven't touched in weeks. Honest answer: not always. The decision is about distribution, not capability — a plugin can't do anything the standalone pieces can't. Hand-wire when it's one project, it's just you, and you're still iterating. Files in .claude/ are faster to edit, need no manifest, and keep short names. Every plugin in my own setup started life as a loose skill or hook I was still fiddling with. Package a plugin when: .claude/ folders around and watching them drift. version field, users get the update; your copied-folder users get nothing, forever.The tell is the second consumer. The moment a setup has one — a teammate, your own second machine, a future you — packaging pays for itself. A minimal plugin is two files. The manifest lives at .claude-plugin/plugin.json : { "name": "my-first-plugin", "description": "A greeting plugin to learn the basics", "version": "1.0.0" } name is the only required field — it becomes the namespace prefix. version is optional but load-bearing: set it and users only get updates when you bump it; omit it and the git commit SHA is the version, so every push ships. Set it for stable releases, omit it while iterating. Components sit at the plugin root , not inside .claude-plugin/ — the number-one structural mistake, per Anthropic's own docs. Only plugin.json goes in there: my-plugin/ ├── .claude-plugin/ │ └── plugin.json only the manifest lives here ├── skills/ │ └── hello/ │ └── SKILL.md becomes /my-plugin:hello ├── commands/ flat .md files, same format as custom slash commands ├── agents/ subagent definitions ├── hooks/ │ └── hooks.json same schema as hooks in settings.json └── .mcp.json bundled MCP servers skills/ is the recommended layout for new plugins each skill a folder with a SKILL.md ; commands/ holds flat Markdown files in the older style. If you already have working pieces in a project's .claude/ directory, migration is mostly cp -r — copy commands/ , agents/ , skills/ across, and move your hooks object out of settings.json into hooks/hooks.json , same shape. One rule saves you a debugging afternoon: use ${CLAUDE PLUGIN ROOT} for every internal path in hook commands and MCP configs. Installed plugins are copied into a cache at ~/.claude/plugins/cache , not run from where the user cloned them — so relative paths that reach outside the plugin directory ../shared-utils simply don't exist after install. The variable always resolves to wherever the plugin actually landed.Point Claude Code at the directory — no marketplace, no install: claude --plugin-dir ./my-plugin Invoke your skill /my-plugin:hello , check /agents for your agents, trigger your hooks. As you edit, /reload-plugins picks up changes mid-session. Before shipping, lint the whole structure: claude plugin validate ./my-plugin It checks plugin.json , skill and agent frontmatter, and hooks/hooks.json for schema errors — the same check Anthropic's review pipeline runs on community submissions. There's also claude plugin init my-tool , which scaffolds a manifest and starter skill under ~/.claude/skills/ that loads automatically next session — the fastest path from nothing to a working plugin skeleton. To share, you publish a catalog. A marketplace is a repo with a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json listing your plugins: { "name": "my-plugins", "owner": { "name": "Your Name" }, "plugins": { "name": "quality-review-plugin", "source": "./plugins/quality-review-plugin", "description": "Adds a quality-review skill for quick code reviews" } } source can be a relative path inside the same repo the simple case: one repo, plugins/ folder, catalog at the root or an object pointing at another GitHub repo, so one catalog can index plugins living anywhere. Test the whole flow locally before pushing: /plugin marketplace add ./my-marketplace /plugin install quality-review-plugin@my-plugins Then push to GitHub and your users run /plugin marketplace add your-name/your-repo . For a team, go one step further: add the marketplace to the project's .claude/settings.json under extraKnownMarketplaces , and Claude Code prompts every collaborator who trusts the repo to install the team plugins. That plus a committed CLAUDE.md file https://dev.to/guides/how-to-write-a-claude-md-file/ is the whole "onboard a new dev's AI tooling" problem, solved in two files. A plugin is code execution with your user privileges — hooks run shell commands, MCP servers are processes, and installing from a marketplace means trusting whoever controls that repo, including their future pushes. Anthropic verifies none of it for third-party sources. The same rules as any dependency: read the component inventory before installing, prefer pinned catalogs like the community marketplace, and be pickier about marketplaces than about plugins — the catalog decides what an update contains. Plugins are the distribution layer for everything else in this cluster: the slash commands https://dev.to/guides/how-to-create-a-custom-slash-command-in-claude-code/ you templatize, the hooks https://dev.to/guides/how-to-use-claude-code-hooks/ that enforce your rules, the MCP servers https://dev.to/guides/how-to-add-an-mcp-server-to-claude-code/ that feed Claude real data, the subagents https://dev.to/guides/how-to-use-subagents-in-claude-code/ that parallelize the work. Once your setup is a plugin, it follows you to every project — which means the economics of running it everywhere start to matter. I keep the heavy drafting lanes on the z.ai GLM Coding Plan https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=BWTG6TRYYQ — that's a referral link, it helps fund our compute, and the plan costs the same with or without it; setup walkthrough in how to set up Claude Code with the GLM API https://dev.to/guides/how-to-set-up-claude-code-with-glm-api/ . And the honest limit of packaging: a plugin makes instructions installable , not good . A bad prompt shipped to five repos is a bad prompt five times. The skill and agent bodies inside your plugin are system prompts, and writing those tight is its own craft — Meta-Prompt + System Prompt Architect https://promptbase.com/skill/metaprompt-system-architect?via=drbasilicious $8.99, one-time is the skill I use to turn rough intent into the kind of precise, reusable, failure-aware instructions that are actually worth namespacing and shipping. Package the wiring with a plugin; make what's inside worth installing. Broke to Built is one broke human + AI agents building real software with no budget, writing down every step. This site's tools run on free GLM — z.ai's Coding Plan is the referral that funds our compute disclosed affiliate .