Claude Code Plugin Marketplace: How to Add and Install Plugins

The Claude Code plugin marketplace is a catalog of installable plugins — bundles of slash commands, subagents, MCP servers, and hooks — that you add to Claude Code with one command. Run /plugin marketplace add owner/repo to add a catalog, then /plugin to browse and install. Anyone can host a marketplace from a Git repository.

Commands and manifest fields verified 31 July 2026 against Anthropic's plugin marketplace documentation.

Plugins are how Claude Code goes from a capable default agent to a setup tuned exactly to your workflow — without hand-editing config files. Anthropic introduced the plugin system to make capabilities shareable and one-command simple. Instead of manually wiring up commands and tools, you pull them from a marketplace and enable them in seconds. This guide explains what a plugin catalog is, how to add one and install plugins, what plugins can contain, and how to publish your own. Claude Code currently runs on the latest Claude models, such as Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5, and this guide is reviewed regularly so the commands stay accurate — adding a marketplace and installing your first plugin takes under 30 seconds. We verified this flow hands-on, so where a step is fiddly we have flagged it from experience instead of guesswork.

What is the Claude Code plugin marketplace?

A catalog published as a Git repository that Claude Code can read and install from. Each plugin inside it bundles any mix of four things: slash commands, subagents, MCP server connections, and hooks.

A Claude Code plugin marketplace is simply a catalog of plugins, published as a Git repository, that Claude Code can read and install from. It's the discovery-and-distribution layer for the Claude Code ecosystem: authors list their plugins in a marketplace, and you add that marketplace to browse everything it offers.

A single plugin can bundle any combination of four things:

• Slash commands — new /commands for repeatable workflows.
• Subagents — specialized subagents that handle a task in their own context.
• MCP servers — Model Context Protocol connections that give Claude new tools and data sources.
• Hooks — hooks that run at defined points in a session to enforce rules or automate steps.

Because one install can deliver all of that at once, a marketplace is the fastest way to share and adopt a complete capability rather than piecing it together yourself.

How to add a Claude Code plugin marketplace

One command points Claude Code at a catalog: /plugin marketplace add with a GitHub owner and repository, or a URL. You can add as many as you like — company, community, and Anthropic own — and they list together.

Adding a marketplace points Claude Code at a catalog it can install from. Use the /plugin marketplace add command with a GitHub owner/repo (or a URL):

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-code

Claude Code reads that repository's catalog and makes its plugins available to browse. You can add as many marketplaces as you like — one from your company, one from a community project, one from Anthropic — and they all show up together. Anthropic maintains its own marketplace in the anthropics/claude-code repo, which is a good first one to add, and the official plugin marketplace documentation covers every command and manifest field.

How to install plugins from the marketplace

/plugin opens a tabbed manager with a Discover tab spanning every catalog you have added, plus views to install, enable, disable, or remove. Installed commands, agents, servers, and hooks activate in the current session.

Once a marketplace is added, the /plugin command is your hub for everything else:

/plugin

That opens a tabbed manager with a Discover tab to browse plugins from all your marketplaces, plus views to install, enable, disable, or remove them. Pick a plugin, install it, and its commands, agents, MCP servers, and hooks become active in your session. If you're ever unsure of the exact subcommand, just run /plugin on its own and use the menu. The whole loop — add a catalog, open /plugin, install what you need — takes under a minute.

The basic workflow is three steps:

What to install first

Common early picks are git and commit helpers, testing and review workflows, framework command packs, and MCP-backed integrations. The practical rule is one at a time: use it on real work, and keep it only if it earns its place.

Good early picks depend on your work, but common categories include: git and commit helpers (like Anthropic's commit-commands), testing and review workflows, framework-specific command packs, and MCP-backed integrations for tools you already use. If you want a large, opinionated bundle rather than individual plugins, frameworks like SuperClaude package dozens of commands and personas together — a different distribution style from the marketplace's à la carte model, and worth comparing.

A practical rule: install one plugin, use it on a real task, and keep it only if it earns its place. Because plugins can add skills, commands, and tools all at once, it's easy to bloat a session — lean setups stay faster and easier to reason about.

We run this Claude-focused site out of Claude Code every day, and our honest experience with the Claude Code plugin marketplace is that restraint pays off far more than collecting. Early on we enabled a cluster of plugins at once and immediately felt the session get heavier and harder to reason about, with slash commands we never touched crowding the menu. What stuck instead was adding capability the moment a real, repeated task demanded it — the same discipline we already apply to our MCP servers and custom skills — and disabling anything that had not earned its keep within a week. A tool blog lives or dies on the accuracy of what it recommends, so we would rather run three plugins we understand deeply than twenty we have never read.

Are Claude Code plugins safe to install?

Treat it like any package registry. A plugin can add hooks, servers, and subagents that run with your permissions, so install from sources you recognise and skim what a bundle contains before you enable it.

Treat the Claude Code plugin marketplace the way you'd treat any package registry: powerful, but only as trustworthy as the source. A plugin can add MCP servers, hooks, and subagents that run with your permissions, so a malicious or careless plugin could run code or reach data you didn't intend. That's not a reason to avoid plugins — it's a reason to be deliberate.

A few sensible habits: install from marketplaces you recognize (Anthropic's own, your company's, or well-known open-source projects), skim what a plugin bundles before enabling it, and prefer plugins whose source you can read on GitHub. Because everything installs from a public repository, you can inspect a plugin's commands, hooks, and MCP config before you trust it. When in doubt, add one plugin at a time and watch what it does rather than enabling a whole marketplace at once.

Managing, updating, and removing plugins

The same menu handles the full lifecycle: enable or disable without uninstalling, or remove entirely. Because everything lives in Git repositories, updates arrive by refreshing the catalog rather than through a package manager.

The same /plugin menu handles the full lifecycle after install. From it you can enable or disable a plugin without uninstalling it — handy when you only need a command pack for a specific project — or remove it entirely. Because plugins come from Git repositories, updates flow through the marketplace: refresh the marketplace and Claude Code sees new plugin versions to install.

If your session starts feeling slow or cluttered, open /plugin and turn off anything you're not actively using. A lean set of plugins keeps Claude focused and your context window free for actual work — the same discipline that applies to MCP servers and subagents applies here.

How to build and publish your own marketplace

Publishing is a Git repository with one manifest file. Create .claude-plugin/marketplace.json listing your plugins and where their files live, push it to GitHub, and anyone can add it with a single command.

Publishing a Claude Code plugin marketplace is deliberately simple: it's just a Git repository with a manifest. Create a repo that contains a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json file listing your plugins (name, description, and where each plugin's files live) — for a first plugin that manifest is often under 20 lines of JSON. Push it to GitHub, and anyone can add it with /plugin marketplace add your-org/your-repo.

This is how teams standardize their tooling — one internal marketplace that ships the company's commands, subagents, and hooks to every developer with a single add. It's also how the community distributes open-source plugins. Because the marketplace is a plain repo, versioning, review, and updates all happen through normal Git, and the Claude Code CLI documentation covers the plugin and marketplace commands in full. If you're still untangling how these pieces relate, our overview of Claude AI plugins separates plugins from MCP servers, skills, and connectors — and the community bundle people call Oh My Claude Code is worth a look too.