Plugins overview

Extend Claude with reusable capability packages that bundle MCP connectors, skills, slash commands, and sub-agents

Plugins are reusable capability packages that extend Claude with custom functionality. They bundle together MCP connectors, skills, slash commands, and sub-agents into a single shareable unit — turning Claude into a specialist tailored to your role, team, and company.

What plugins do

Plugins let you define how you like work done, which tools and data to pull from, how to handle critical workflows, and what slash commands to expose so your team gets consistent outcomes. Every component is file-based, so plugins are easy to build, edit, and share.

As your team builds and shares plugins, Claude becomes a cross-functional expert. Best practices get baked into every interaction, so leaders and admins can spend less time enforcing processes and more time improving them.

Plugin directory

To help you get started, Anthropic has open-sourced 11 plugins built and used internally:

Plugin	What it does
Productivity	Manage tasks, calendars, and daily workflows
Enterprise search	Find information across your company’s tools and docs
Sales	Research prospects, prep deals, and follow your sales process
Finance	Analyze financials, build models, and track key metrics
Data	Query, visualize, and interpret datasets
Legal	Review documents, flag risks, and track compliance
Marketing	Draft content, plan campaigns, and manage launches
Customer support	Triage issues, draft responses, and surface solutions
Product management	Write specs, prioritize roadmaps, and track progress
Biology research	Search literature, analyze results, and plan experiments
Plugin Create	Create and customize new plugins from scratch

Browse the full collection at claude.com/plugins or use the Plugin Create plugin to build your own.

Origins in Claude Code

Plugins originated in Claude Code, where developers create and distribute them as versioned, shareable directories. A Claude Code plugin lives in a directory with a manifest (plugin.json) that defines its identity, version, and available components.

For technical details on plugin structure, manifests, and configuration, see the Claude Code plugins reference.

Plugins in Cowork

Plugins are fully supported in Cowork, Anthropic’s agentic workspace for complex, multi-step knowledge work. In Cowork, Claude runs inside an isolated virtual machine environment, executes tasks in parallel workstreams, and writes outputs directly to your file system — and plugins extend all of that capability.

A sales plugin, for example, could connect Claude to your CRM and knowledge base, teach it your sales process, and give you slash commands for everything from prospect research to call follow-ups. You define what goes in the plugin once, and Claude pulls from that context whenever it’s relevant.

How plugins compose capabilities

Plugin component	What it adds	Example
Skills	Specialized instructions Claude follows when relevant tasks arise	A “brand voice” skill that activates when drafting external communications
MCP connectors	Access to external tools and data	A connector to a CRM that lets Claude read and update deal records
Slash commands	Explicit, user-triggered workflows	/sales:prospect-research to kick off a structured research workflow
Sub-agents	Delegated workstreams that run in parallel	A sub-agent that handles competitive analysis while another drafts the proposal

Availability

Plugin support in Cowork is available as a beta for all paid Claude users. Plugins are currently saved locally to your machine. Org-wide sharing and management are coming in the weeks ahead.

Platform	Plugin support
Claude Code	Full plugin support — create, install, and use plugins
Claude Cowork	Full plugin support — plugins extend agentic, multi-step workflows

Looking to submit your own plugin? See Submitting your plugin.

Next steps

Plugin directory

Browse the full plugin collection.

Create plugins

Build and distribute plugins in Claude Code.

Skills overview

Learn how skills work as a core plugin component.

Connectors overview

Understand MCP connectors that plugins can bundle.