Plugins: Extensions for AI Coding Tools

A plugin bundles skills, agents, hooks, or MCP servers into one shareable package — like an app from an app store for your agent.

What a plugin is

A plugin is a folder with add-on functionality for an AI coding tool. In Claude Code, a plugin can bring several things at once: skills (instructions, see its own entry), custom agents, hooks (automatic rules), and MCP servers (connections to external tools). A plugin is therefore bigger than a single skill — it's a whole package.

Plugin vs. skill vs. editor extension

A skill is a single instruction in a SKILL.md file. A plugin can contain one or more skills, plus other building blocks like hooks or MCP servers. An editor extension (e.g. for VS Code) is something different: it extends the editor itself, not necessarily an AI agent, and is usually installed through the editor's own marketplace, not through Claude Code.

How to find and install plugins

Claude Code has a built-in /plugin command that opens a plugin manager: there you can browse available plugins (Discover), install them, manage installed ones (Installed), and add marketplaces. Anthropic maintains an official collection that's automatically available. You install a plugin with a command like /plugin install name@marketplace-name.

A word of caution

Plugins can run arbitrary code with your user permissions. Only install plugins from sources you trust.

EXAMPLE

A team builds an internal plugin "deploy-tools" with a skill /deploy-tools:release and an MCP server for their internal deployment system. They host it as a Git repo. A new team member adds the marketplace ("/plugin marketplace add company/deploy-tools") and installs the plugin with "/plugin install deploy-tools@company" — from then on they have the same access as everyone else on the team.

QUICK QUIZ

What distinguishes a plugin from a single skill in Claude Code?