Claude Code Plugin Marketplace Template

Create and distribute Claude Code plugins for your team or community. This GitHub template gives you a working marketplace structure, scaffolding commands, validation, and CI/CD automation.

Features

• Skip the boilerplate. Marketplace structure, plugin manifests, and GitHub Actions validation come ready to use.
• Plugin development toolkit. Scaffold plugins, add commands, skills, agents, and hooks, then validate before release.
• Team distribution. Set up automatic marketplace installation for your projects.
• Docs and a working example. Guides for every plugin component, plus a hello-world plugin you can copy.

What's Included

Quick Start

1. Create Your Marketplace

Click "Use this template" on GitHub, then clone your new repository:

git clone https://github.com/your-org/your-marketplace-name.git
cd your-marketplace-name

2. Customize the Marketplace

Update .claude-plugin/marketplace.json with your organization details:

{
  "name": "my-team-marketplace",
  "owner": {
    "name": "Your Organization",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "metadata": {
    "description": "A curated collection of Claude Code plugins for our team",
    "version": "1.0.0"
  },
  "plugins": []
}

3. Install the Plugin Development Toolkit

# Start Claude Code
claude

# Add your local marketplace
/plugin marketplace add .

# Install the development toolkit
/plugin install plugin-development@my-team-marketplace

4. Create Your First Plugin

# Scaffold a new plugin
/plugin-development:init my-awesome-plugin

# Add components
/plugin-development:add-command my-command "Description of what it does"
/plugin-development:add-skill my-skill "Use when working with..."

# Validate before publishing
/plugin-development:validate

Plugin Development Commands

The plugin-development plugin provides these commands:

Repository Structure

├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── marketplace.json          # Marketplace configuration
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── validate-plugins.yml  # CI/CD validation
├── docs/                         # Documentation
│   ├── plugins.md                # Plugin development guide
│   ├── plugins-reference.md      # Technical specifications
│   ├── plugin-marketplaces.md    # Marketplace management
│   ├── hooks.md                  # Event-driven automation
│   ├── settings.md               # Configuration options
│   ├── slash-commands.md         # Command system reference
│   ├── skills.md                 # Agent skills guide
│   └── sub-agents.md             # Sub-agent system
└── plugins/
    ├── hello-world/              # Example plugin
    └── plugin-development/       # Development toolkit

Team Distribution

Configure automatic marketplace installation for your team by adding .claude/settings.json to your projects:

{
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": {
    "my-team-marketplace": {
      "source": {
        "source": "github",
        "repo": "your-org/your-marketplace-name"
      }
    }
  }
}

When team members trust the repository folder, Claude Code installs the marketplace for them. See Configure team marketplaces for details.

Installing from GitHub

Once your marketplace is published to GitHub, users can install plugins with:

# Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add your-org/your-marketplace-name

# Install a plugin
/plugin install plugin-name@your-marketplace-name

Local Testing

Test your plugins before publishing:

# Navigate to your marketplace
cd your-marketplace-name

# Start Claude Code
claude

# Add local marketplace
/plugin marketplace add .

# Install and test a plugin
/plugin install hello-world@my-team-marketplace
/hello World

For iterative development:

# After making changes
/plugin-development:validate
/plugin uninstall plugin-name@my-team-marketplace
/plugin install plugin-name@my-team-marketplace

Uninstalling

Remove the marketplace and its plugins from Claude Code:

# Remove a specific plugin
/plugin uninstall plugin-name@my-team-marketplace

# Remove the marketplace entirely
/plugin marketplace remove my-team-marketplace

To remove everything, delete the cloned repository directory.

Creating Plugins Manually

If you prefer manual setup over the scaffolding commands:

1. Create Plugin Directory

mkdir -p plugins/my-plugin/.claude-plugin
mkdir -p plugins/my-plugin/commands

2. Add Plugin Manifest

Create plugins/my-plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json:

{
  "name": "my-plugin",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Description of what your plugin does",
  "author": {
    "name": "Your Name",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "license": "MIT",
  "keywords": ["keyword1", "keyword2"]
}

3. Create a Command

Create plugins/my-plugin/commands/my-command.md:

---
description: Brief description of what the command does
argument-hint: [arg1] [arg2]
---

# My Command

Instructions for Claude on how to execute this command.

## Steps

1. First step
2. Second step
3. Third step

4. Register in Marketplace

Add to .claude-plugin/marketplace.json:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "my-plugin",
      "description": "Description of what your plugin does",
      "version": "1.0.0",
      "author": {
        "name": "Your Name"
      },
      "source": "./plugins/my-plugin",
      "category": "utilities",
      "tags": ["tag1", "tag2"]
    }
  ]
}

Documentation

Local Guides (in docs/)

Official Claude Code Documentation

• Plugins Overview: plugin development guide
• Plugin Marketplaces: marketplace management
• Plugins Reference: technical specifications
• Slash Commands: command development

Example Plugins

hello-world

A minimal plugin showing the basic structure:

/plugin install hello-world@my-team-marketplace
/hello World
# Output: Hello, World! 👋

plugin-development

The toolkit you use to build and validate plugins:

• 7 slash commands for scaffolding and validation
• plugin-authoring skill for ambient guidance
• plugin-reviewer agent for release readiness audits
• Automated hooks for validation and formatting

See the plugin-development README for details.

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-plugin)
3. Make your changes
4. Run validation (/plugin-development:validate)
5. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing plugin')
6. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-plugin)
7. Open a Pull Request

Acknowledgments

Built for Claude Code by Anthropic.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Resources

• Claude Code Documentation
• Anthropic Discord: community support
• Claude Code GitHub: official repository