What are Claude Code plugins and plugin marketplaces?

What goes in a plugin, and whether you need one

In a Claude Code session, /plugin install commit-commands@claude-plugins-official installs a plugin from Anthropic's official marketplace. The name before the @ is the plugin, and the one after it is the marketplace.

Build your own when pieces have to be installed together, such as a team's review skill and the formatting hook that goes with it, so everyone gets both in one step. We wouldn't wrap a single personal skill, because a skill saved in ~/.claude/skills/ already shows up in every project on your machine.

A plugin can carry any mix of these:

• Skills, which load when they're relevant.
• Subagents, which take the tasks Claude delegates.
• Hooks, which run at set points in Claude Code's lifecycle.
• MCP servers, which connect while the plugin is enabled.
• Language servers, monitors, output styles, color themes and command-line tools.

A plugin's code runs with your user privileges, even from the official marketplace. Once enabled, it's part of every session, not only the ones where you use it. The name and description of each skill, agent and command Claude can invoke on its own sit in context on every turn. Its MCP servers run beside each session, and its hooks fire on their events.

Plugin marketplaces: a catalog you can host yourself

Anthropic opened plugins to every Claude Code user as a public beta on October 9, 2025, and its announcement said anyone can host a marketplace. A git repository, GitHub repository or URL with a properly formatted marketplace.json is enough.

Claude Code adds claude-plugins-official the first time you start an interactive terminal session. You add any other marketplace once with /plugin marketplace add, followed by a GitHub owner/repo, a git URL, a local path or the https address of a marketplace.json. Start a local path with ./ or ../, because Claude Code reads a bare name/name as a GitHub repository.

Official names such as claude-plugins-official and community names such as claude-community are accepted only for marketplaces sourced from github.com/anthropics/ repositories. Everything else is third-party, your company's marketplace included.

Your own marketplace is the one file below, .claude-plugin/marketplace.json, with a name, an owner and a plugins array at the top. Anthropic's marketplace guide also requires a name and a source in every plugin entry. A relative source starts from the marketplace root, the folder that holds .claude-plugin/. An entry can also point elsewhere, such as another GitHub repository or an npm package.

The entry name is the install id, while the name in the plugin's plugin.json becomes the prefix on its skills. If they differ, installing by the manifest name fails with a not-found error. Make them equal in the first commit, and from then on rename both or neither. Run claude plugin validate ./my-marketplace before you push: it checks the JSON, the required fields and each plugin stored inside.

{
  "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"
    }
  ]
}

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Install and manage plugins with /plugin

Before it installs anything, /plugin install opens the plugin's details: the commands, agents, skills, hooks and MCP and LSP servers it will add. For a plugin in the official marketplace, the pane also estimates the context it costs, per turn and once its skills load. Run /plugin with no name and you get a panel of everything your marketplaces list.

Pick user scope to have a plugin on in every project: it goes into enabledPlugins in ~/.claude/settings.json. Project scope writes the committed .claude/settings.json, and local scope writes .claude/settings.local.json. When one plugin is set at several scopes, local beats project and project beats user.

For a team, project scope puts the entry in a file everyone pulls. It switches the plugin on for each collaborator but downloads nothing, so everyone still installs it once with --scope project.

Type / afterwards and look for skills like /commit-commands:commit. The Installed tab of /plugin lists the plugin with its scope, and if it failed to load, the Errors tab says why.

Plugins from claude-plugins-official update automatically. Community, third-party and local marketplaces start with auto-update off, and you switch it on per marketplace in the Marketplaces tab. Removing a marketplace uninstalls every plugin you installed from it. A running session keeps the versions it loaded until you run /reload-plugins.

# Inside a Claude Code session
/plugin
/plugin marketplace add your-org/plugins
/plugin install commit-commands@claude-plugins-official
/reload-plugins

# From your shell, for setup scripts
claude plugin install formatter@your-org --scope project
claude plugin list
claude plugin disable formatter@your-org
claude plugin update formatter@your-org

Build a plugin: layout, manifest and a first run

A plugin starts with its manifest at .claude-plugin/plugin.json, and the only required field is name. It identifies the plugin and becomes the prefix on every skill and agent, and it can't hold spaces. Users see description in /plugin. An optional version keeps them on that version until you change it.

Put nothing else in .claude-plugin/. Components saved there don't load, and Anthropic's troubleshooting names a skills/ folder inside it as one cause of a plugin that loads with its skills missing.

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

1. Create the plugin folder and its manifest folder with mkdir -p my-first-plugin/.claude-plugin.
2. Save the manifest above as my-first-plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json.
3. Add a skill at my-first-plugin/skills/hello/SKILL.md, with a name and a description in its frontmatter.
4. Run claude plugin validate ./my-first-plugin. Anthropic's guide shows ✔ Validation passed on success, or one line for each field to fix.
5. Start a session with claude --plugin-dir ./my-first-plugin and run /my-first-plugin:hello. The flag loads the plugin for that session only and writes nothing to your settings. After an edit, /reload-plugins picks up the change.

Already keep skills, agents or hooks under .claude/? Copy those folders into the plugin root, and move the hooks object from your settings into hooks/hooks.json. Both copies load until you delete the originals. Skills won't collide, since the plugin's carry a prefix, but a hook in both places runs twice.

Can you get a plugin from Mindket?

Not through /plugin. Mindket is an independent store, not affiliated with Anthropic, and it serves no marketplace.json, so /plugin marketplace add has nothing to read there. Its skills page won't help either: those are ready-made prompts you paste into an AI chat.

A kit laid out like a plugin does load, though. What you download is a zip of plain text files, such as skills, rules, prompts and templates, and its page shows the README and file list. Point claude --plugin-dir at the zip or at the folder you unzip it into, and it loads for one session with its hooks firing like any plugin's.

A kit's zip keeps its files at the top level, with no folder named after the kit around them. Nothing in it runs by itself, and a moderator reads any kit with scripts in it before buyers get it.

We read Anthropic's Claude Code pages on November 2 and 3, 2026 and didn't install these plugins ourselves, so the commands and flags are as documented on those days.

Reference: where each part goes in a plugin

Claude Code ignores a CLAUDE.md at the plugin root, so any instructions belong in a skill.

Subagents go in agents/, one Markdown file each, written like the standalone ones in our Claude Code subagents guide with one difference. Inside a plugin, an agent's hooks, mcpServers and permissionMode fields are ignored, so hooks and servers are declared at the plugin level.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Claude Code docs: Plugins overview (read November 3, 2026)https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins
2. Claude Code docs: Create a Claude Code plugin (read November 2, 2026)https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins/create
3. Claude Code docs: Add components to a plugin (read November 2, 2026)https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins/components
4. Claude Code docs: Install and manage plugins (read November 2, 2026)https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins/install
5. Claude Code docs: Create a marketplace (read November 2, 2026)https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins/create-marketplace
6. Claude blog: Customize Claude Code with plugins (read November 2, 2026)https://claude.com/blog/claude-code-plugins