7 min · +110 XP
Plugins: ready-made sets to install
A plugin packs skills, helpers, hooks and connections into one install.
By the end of this lesson
You will be able to find, check and install a plugin, choose its scope and switch it off again.
A plugin is a ready-made set of additions for Claude Code that someone has packed together: skills, helper subagents, hooks and connections to services (MCP servers). You install it in one step, much like adding an extension to a web browser. Plugins come from marketplaces, which are catalogs that list them.
Install your first plugin
In the terminal
- 1Start Claude Code in your project with claude.
- 2Type /plugin and press Enter. The panel opens on the Discover tab with plugins from your marketplaces.
- 3Type to search, move with the arrow keys and press Enter on a plugin to open its details.
- 4Read the details. Will install lists the commands, skills, agents, hooks and servers it adds.
- 5Choose a scope: Install for you (user scope), Install for all collaborators on this repository (project scope), or Install for you, in this repo only (local scope).
- 6Read the last line of the summary. Plugin is now active means it is ready. Run /reload-plugins to apply means a reload is needed, and Claude Code runs it for you.
- 7Type / and look for the plugin's skills, written as /plugin-name:skill-name.
/plugin install commit-commands@claude-plugins-official
commit-commands, from Anthropic's official marketplace, adds commands for committing, pushing and opening pull requests. In a session this first opens the plugin's details, so you still review it and pick a scope. Afterwards /commit-commands:commit appears in the / menu.
›What a marketplace is
A marketplace is a list of plugins with the addresses to fetch them from, usually a GitHub repository. You choose which of them to install. Claude Code adds Anthropic's official marketplace, claude-plugins-official, the first time you start an interactive terminal session. You can look through what it offers on the web at claude.com/marketplace before installing anything.
In the desktop app, click the + button next to the prompt box and choose Add plugins. In VS Code, type /plugins in the prompt box to open Manage plugins. A plugin installed for you (user scope) in the terminal, the desktop app or VS Code is available in the other two on the same computer.
“Find a plugin in the official Claude Code marketplace that helps with commits and pull requests. Tell me what it would install (skills, agents, hooks, servers) and what its hooks run. Do not install anything until I say yes.”
You decide after reading the answer; then install it in /plugin or ask Claude to.
Trust before you install
A plugin can run code on your computer with your user privileges. Its hooks and servers run outside the permission checks that apply to Claude's own actions. Before an install, Claude Code warns that Anthropic does not control what is included in plugins and cannot verify that they work as intended. Install only from sources you trust, and read what a plugin does even when it comes from a well-known marketplace.
A short check
- 1Who publishes the marketplace? Ask Claude: "show me my plugin marketplaces and where each one comes from".
- 2What will it install? Read the Will install section in the details.
- 3What do its hooks and servers run? Choose Open homepage or View on GitHub and read hooks/hooks.json and .mcp.json.
- 4Not using it any more? Disable it in /plugin, or say "disable the plugin …", or uninstall it.
Every enabled plugin puts the names and descriptions of its model-invocable skills and agents into context on every turn. Official-marketplace plugins show a Context cost estimate (Every turn and When invoked) when opened from the Marketplaces tab or by naming the marketplace. Add other catalogs with /plugin marketplace add owner/repo. Project scope writes to the committed .claude/settings.json, but each collaborator still installs the plugin. claude --plugin-dir ./my-plugin loads a plugin for one session without a marketplace. Cloud sessions do not load your local plugins. With auto-update on, files can change after you reviewed them; it is set per marketplace.
A colleague sends a link to a plugin from a GitHub account you do not know. It promises to speed up your work. What do you do first?
After an install the summary ends with "Run /reload-plugins to apply." What does it mean?
Facts checked against the official Claude Code docs October 24, 2026 · source
Author
Evgenii Arsentev
PhD · Chief Executive Officer, digital health