Managing Plugins

Managing Plugins

This skill provides guidance for creating and maintaining Claude Code plugins.

Before creating or modifying plugin components, use @agent-claude-code-guide to look up best practices and understand your options.

Plugin Structure

Every plugin lives in plugins/<plugin-name>/ with this structure:

plugins/<plugin-name>/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── plugin.json    # Plugin metadata and configuration
├── changelog/         # Plugin changelog (managed by tenzir-changelog)
├── README.md          # User-facing documentation (required)
├── skills/            # See [skills.md](./skills.md)
├── commands/          # See [commands.md](./commands.md)
├── hooks/             # See [hooks.md](./hooks.md)
└── agents/            # See [subagents.md](./subagents.md)

Plugin Metadata

The plugin.json file defines the plugin:

{
  "name": "plugin-name",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "description": "Brief description of what this plugin does",
  "author": {
    "name": "Tenzir",
    "email": "engineering@tenzir.com",
    "url": "https://github.com/tenzir"
  },
  "homepage": "https://github.com/tenzir/claude-plugins",
  "repository": "https://github.com/tenzir/claude-plugins",
  "license": "Apache-2.0"
}

For MCP servers, add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "server-name": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["package-name"]
    }
  }
}

README Template

Every plugin must have a README.md. See readme-template.md for the exact structure.

Marketplace Registration

After creating a plugin, register it in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json:

{
  "name": "plugin-name",
  "description": "What this plugin does",
  "source": "./plugins/plugin-name"
}

Note: The description must be duplicated in both plugin.json and marketplace.json. The marketplace does not read descriptions from plugin.json—it needs its own copy for plugin discovery.

Keep plugins sorted alphabetically by name.

Versioning

Plugins must start at version 0.0.0. This allows the first release to use standard bump flags (--patch, --minor, --major) to produce typical initial versions like 0.0.1, 0.1.0, or 1.0.0.

Follow SemVer when updating plugins:

• Patch (0.0.0 → 0.0.1): Bug fixes, typo corrections
• Minor (0.0.0 → 0.1.0): New features, backward-compatible enhancements
• Major (0.0.0 → 1.0.0): Breaking changes, production-ready