Plugins
Shareable bundles of agents, skills, hooks, and MCP servers — installed from a marketplace.
Overview
A plugin is a self-contained bundle: any mix of agents, skills, hooks, and MCP servers, packaged together and versioned as one unit. What sets a plugin apart from dropping the same files into .claudin/ directly is namespacing — a plugin's commands show up as /plugin-name:cmd instead of /cmd, so two plugins (or a plugin and your own project) can't collide.
Manifest
.claude-plugin/plugin.json at the plugin root:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
name | Required, kebab-case, no spaces — also becomes the command namespace. |
version, description, author, homepage, repository, license, keywords | Metadata. |
dependencies | Other plugins this one requires to be enabled. |
hooks, commands, agents, skills, mcpServers | Inline definitions or paths, supplementing the plugin's own hooks/, commands/, agents/, skills/ directories. |
outputStyles, lspServers, channels, userConfig, settings | Additional, less common manifest sections. |
Unknown top-level fields are ignored rather than rejected, so the format can grow without breaking older plugins.
See Output styles for how the outputStyles manifest section is consumed.
Storage
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Installed plugins | ~/.claudin/plugins (override with CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR) |
| Per-plugin persistent data | ~/.claudin/plugins/data/<plugin-id>/, exposed to the plugin as ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA} — survives updates. |
| Plugin identity | {name}@{marketplace}, or {name}@builtin for the ones that ship with Claudin. |
Marketplaces
A marketplace is just a source Claudin knows how to resolve plugins from — a marketplace.json URL, a GitHub repo, a git URL, an npm package, or a local path. Add one, then install from it:
claudin plugin marketplace add owner/repo
claudin plugin install frontend-design@claude-plugins-officialCLI
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
claudin plugin validate <path> | Validate a plugin or marketplace manifest. |
claudin plugin list [--available] | List installed plugins, or everything a marketplace offers. |
claudin plugin marketplace add <source> | Register a marketplace. --sparse <paths...> for monorepo checkouts. |
claudin plugin marketplace list / remove / update | Manage registered marketplaces. |
claudin plugin install <plugin> | plugin@marketplace. -s/--scope user|project|local (default user). |
claudin plugin uninstall <plugin> | --keep-data preserves the plugin's persistent data. |
claudin plugin enable / disable [-a/--all] <plugin> | Toggle without uninstalling. |
claudin plugin update <plugin> | Update to the latest version (restart to apply). |
Inside the REPL, /plugin (aliases /plugins, /marketplace) opens the same surface interactively — browse a marketplace, install, or manage what's already there.
Built-in plugins
A few plugins ship with Claudin itself and appear under "Built-in" in /plugin — same enable/disable controls as anything installed from a marketplace. This is a different concept from bundled skills: bundled skills are always active and hardcoded, while a built-in plugin is just a plugin with a fixed source, and can bundle several skills, hooks, and MCP servers together under one toggle.