Marketplace

Level: 🌿 Intermediate

Source: Plugin Marketplaces

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The marketplace is how plugins get discovered and distributed. Claude Code supports multiple marketplace tiers, from Anthropic’s official catalog to community-run collections and team-internal registries.

Marketplace Tiers

Tier	Source	How to access
Official	anthropics/claude-plugins-official (GitHub)	Available by default — just open /plugin
Community	Any GitHub repo with a marketplace.json	Add manually with /plugin marketplace add owner/repo
Enterprise / Team	Internal repos configured via extraKnownMarketplaces in project settings	Auto-prompted when you open the project

The official marketplace is curated by Anthropic. Community marketplaces are maintained by their authors and are not reviewed by Anthropic. Team marketplaces let organizations distribute internal plugins without publishing them publicly.

Browsing and Discovering Plugins

Open the plugin browser:

/plugin

Switch to the Discover tab to browse available plugins across all your configured marketplaces. For each plugin you’ll see:

• Name and description — what it does in one line
• Author — who built and maintains it
• Components — which parts it includes (skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, LSP servers)
• Marketplace source — which marketplace it comes from

Marketplace Categories

Plugins generally fall into these categories:

Category	What it covers	Examples
Code Intelligence / LSP	Language servers for go-to-definition, type errors, find references	TypeScript, Python, Rust LSP plugins
External Integrations / MCP	Connect Claude to external services and APIs	context7 (library docs), database connectors
Development Workflows	Skills and agents for common development tasks	code-review, frontend-design, TDD workflows
Output Styles	Control how Claude writes code and communicates	Formatting conventions, comment styles

Evaluating a Plugin Before Installing

Before installing, look at:

1. README and description — Does it clearly explain what the plugin does?
2. Components — What does it actually include? A plugin with hooks and MCP servers has more surface area than one with just skills.
3. Author — Is it from Anthropic, a known community maintainer, or an unknown source?
4. Activity — Is the repository actively maintained?

Security Considerations

Plugins can include powerful components. Understand what you’re installing:

• Hooks run shell commands on your machine in response to lifecycle events. A malicious hook could execute arbitrary code.
• MCP servers connect Claude to external services. They can send data outside your machine.
• Skills are just prompts — they’re the safest component. They can’t do anything Claude couldn’t already do.
• Agents can use tools and modify files, but within Claude’s existing permission model.

Anthropic reviews plugins in the official marketplace. Community marketplace plugins are not reviewed by Anthropic — evaluate them yourself before installing.

Managing Marketplaces

Add a marketplace

From within Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add owner/repo

Or from the CLI:

claude plugin marketplace add owner/repo

List configured marketplaces

/plugin marketplace list

Remove a marketplace

/plugin marketplace remove owner/repo

Add a local directory as a marketplace

/plugin marketplace add ./path/to/marketplace

This is useful for developing plugins locally or for team marketplaces distributed via file shares.

🌳 Creating Your Own Marketplace

A marketplace is a GitHub repository (or local directory) containing a marketplace.json file at the root. This file lists all plugins available in the marketplace.

marketplace.json Format

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "my-plugin",
      "source": "./my-plugin"
    },
    {
      "name": "another-plugin",
      "source": "./another-plugin"
    }
  ]
}

Each entry points to a directory within the repo that contains a valid plugin (with .claude-plugin/plugin.json).

Hosting on GitHub

1. Create a GitHub repo for your marketplace
2. Add plugin directories to the repo, each with their own .claude-plugin/plugin.json
3. Create marketplace.json at the root listing all plugins with "source": "./<plugin-dir>"
4. Others add your marketplace with /plugin marketplace add your-org/your-marketplace

Team Marketplaces via Settings

For team-wide distribution, add your marketplace to the project’s .claude/settings.json:

{
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": ["your-org/your-marketplace"]
}

When team members open the project, Claude Code prompts them to install the marketplace and its plugins. This avoids the manual /plugin marketplace add step.

Publishing to the Official Marketplace

To submit a plugin to Anthropic’s official marketplace:

1. Ensure your plugin has a complete plugin.json manifest (name, description, version (see versioning), author)
2. Test it thoroughly with claude --plugin-dir ./your-plugin
3. Submit via the official submission page
4. Anthropic reviews the plugin before it appears in the official catalog

Next Steps

• See Plugin Examples for a curated showcase of notable plugins and the patterns they demonstrate
• Return to Plugins for installation, creation, and configuration details
• See Automating Your Workflows for the bigger picture of hooks, skills, and sub agents