Installing Plugins in Claude Code

Claude Code installs plugins through marketplaces and the in-session /plugin command.

From a marketplace

/plugin marketplace add <owner>/<repo>
/plugin install <plugin-name>@<marketplace-name>

/plugin opens the plugin browser, where you can enable, disable, and uninstall plugins interactively.

From a local directory

For local development, point /plugin at a marketplace.json file that references your plugin directory:

{
  "name": "local-example-plugins",
  "owner": { "name": "you" },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "text-processor-plugin",
      "source": "./text-processor-plugin",
      "description": "Text analysis skills"
    }
  ]
}

Then inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add /absolute/path/to/marketplace.json
/plugin install text-processor-plugin@local-example-plugins

Claude Code reads .claude-plugin/plugin.json, loads skills from skills/, and starts MCP servers from .mcp.json.

Using Plugin Skills

Once loaded, skills are available conversationally or via explicit syntax:

Analyze the reading level of this paragraph

Or invoke with namespace:

/text-processor-plugin:check-reading-level

Managing Installed Plugins

Use /plugin to review installed plugins, enable or disable them, and uninstall them. After editing a local plugin, disable and re-enable it from /plugin to reload it.

Configuring Plugins

Set environment variables required by plugins:

export HF_TOKEN="hf_xxxxx"

Claude Code reads these from your shell environment when the plugin loads.

Set environment variables in your shell before running Claude Code:

export HF_TOKEN="hf_xxxxx"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk_xxxxx"

Claude Code reads these when plugins load. No in-app configuration needed.

Check if .claude-plugin/plugin.json exists and is valid:

cat ./my-plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

Ensure skills directory exists:

ls -la ./my-plugin/skills/

Re-enable the plugin from /plugin to reload it.

Verify .mcp.json has valid JSON with mcpServers key:

cat ./.mcp.json

Re-enable the plugin from /plugin after editing the config.