This document describes the plugin marketplace system used by Claude Code to distribute, organize, and discover plugins. The marketplace provides a centralized registry of bundled plugins with metadata for categorization, authorship, and discovery. For detailed information about plugin architecture and how plugins extend Claude Code, see Plugin System. For documentation of individual bundled plugins, see sections Code Review Plugin, Output Style Plugins, Development Workflow Plugins, and Other Marketplace Plugins.
The plugin marketplace is defined in a single JSON file at `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json1-151 This file serves as the authoritative registry for all bundled plugins shipped with Claude Code.
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json1-151
The marketplace file contains two primary sections:
claude-code-plugins), version, description, and owner contact information for AnthropicEach plugin entry in the plugins array contains the following fields:
| Field | Required | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
name | Yes | string | Unique plugin identifier (e.g., code-review) |
description | Yes | string | Brief explanation of plugin functionality |
source | Yes | string | Relative path to plugin directory (e.g., ./plugins/code-review) |
category | Yes | string | One of: development, productivity, learning, security |
version | No | string | Semantic version (e.g., 1.0.0) |
author | No | object | Contains name (string) and email (string) |
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json11-149
The marketplace organizes plugins into four functional categories, enabling users to discover plugins by use case:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json11-149
Plugins focused on software development workflows and tooling:
Plugins enhancing developer productivity and workflow automation:
Plugins that modify Claude's interaction style for educational purposes:
Plugin focused on security best practices:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json11-149
The marketplace enables plugin discovery through a structured loading process from registry to runtime:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json1-151
The marketplace supports multiple discovery patterns:
Category-based Discovery: Users can filter plugins by category to find tools relevant to their workflow (development, productivity, learning, security)
Metadata-based Search: Plugin descriptions provide searchable text for functionality discovery (e.g., searching for "review" finds code-review and pr-review-toolkit)
Source Path Resolution: The source field provides a consistent pattern for locating plugin files: ./plugins/<plugin-name> for all bundled plugins
Author Attribution: Optional author field enables discovery by maintainer or team (e.g., all plugins by [email protected])
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json11-149
Each plugin's source field points to a directory containing the plugin's implementation:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json73-82 `plugins/frontend-design/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md1-42 `plugins/frontend-design/README.md1-32
Bundled plugins follow a consistent directory layout under ./plugins/<plugin-name>/:
SKILL.md files that include frontmatter metadata and implementation guidelinesThis structure enables the plugin system to automatically discover and load plugin capabilities based on directory contents. For details on how these components integrate with Claude Code, see Plugin System, Hook System, and Skill System.
Sources: `plugins/frontend-design/README.md1-32 `plugins/frontend-design/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md1-42
The current marketplace implementation focuses on bundled plugins - plugins distributed with Claude Code itself. All 13 plugins in `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json` are bundled:
| Plugin Type | Count | Distribution | Source Path Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bundled | 13 | Shipped with Claude Code | ./plugins/<plugin-name> |
| External | 0 | Not yet supported | N/A |
The marketplace schema (`.claude-plugin/marketplace.json2) references https://anthropic.com/claude-code/marketplace.schema.json, suggesting infrastructure for schema validation and potential future extensibility.
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json1-151
The marketplace itself has a version (`.claude-plugin/marketplace.json4): "version": "1.0.0". Individual plugins may optionally specify versions:
code-review (1.0.0), claude-opus-4-5-migration (1.0.0), commit-commands (1.0.0), explanatory-output-style (1.0.0), feature-dev (1.0.0), frontend-design (1.0.0), hookify (0.1.0), learning-output-style (1.0.0), plugin-dev (0.1.0), pr-review-toolkit (1.0.0), ralph-wiggum (1.0.0), security-guidance (1.0.0)agent-sdk-devPlugins using semantic versioning enable dependency management and compatibility tracking as the plugin ecosystem evolves.
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json11-149
Author information includes name and email, enabling:
Example author entries:
[email protected]): code-review, learning-output-style[email protected]): hookify, plugin-dev, ralph-wiggumfrontend-design[email protected]): commit-commands, pr-review-toolkitSources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json32-145
Plugin descriptions follow specific patterns to communicate functionality clearly:
These descriptions appear in:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json30-146
The marketplace serves as the entry point to the plugin ecosystem described in Plugin System. The discovery process maps marketplace entries to runtime plugin capabilities:
Sources: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json1-151
The marketplace provides the metadata layer that enables the plugin system's four extension mechanisms (Skills, Hooks, Commands, Agents) to be discovered, loaded, and made available to users. For details on how each mechanism works, see Plugin System.
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