Claude Plugins: What They Are and How to Install Them

Claude has three building blocks for extending what it can do: skills, connectors, and sub-agents. A plugin bundles all of them into a single package. Install one plugin and you get a configured setup for a role or workflow, without touching each piece individually. That distinction is worth understanding before you start browsing marketplaces, because a plugin is not just a fancier connector or a renamed skill. It is a layer above both.

If you want the full picture on how skills and connectors work on their own before jumping into plugins, the guides on Claude skills and Claude connectors cover both in detail. The Claude Cowork plugins guide goes deep on the Cowork-specific side of things, including hooks and how sub-agents run inside a plugin context.

What a plugin actually is

Think of it this way. A connector links one app to Claude. A skill defines one repeatable capability. A plugin is the package that holds both (plus any sub-agents needed to orchestrate them), pre-configured for a specific context.

According to Anthropic’s support documentation, plugins customize how Claude works for your role, team, and company. Each plugin bundles skills, connectors, and sub-agents into a single package, so you get a ready-to-go setup instead of configuring each piece yourself. That’s the practical difference between a plugin and its components: one install versus assembling things from scratch.

A plugin for a legal team might include a connector to a document management system, a skill for summarizing case materials, and a sub-agent that routes research tasks. You install the plugin and get all three, already wired together.

Where plugins work

Plugins are available on all paid Claude plans: Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. Within those plans, they work in Claude on the web, in the Chat tab in Claude Desktop, and in Claude Cowork.

Two features are specific to Cowork: hooks and sub-agents. Hooks let a plugin respond to events automatically. Sub-agents handle multi-step tasks on your behalf. If you need either of those, you need Cowork. Everything else in a plugin works across all the supported surfaces.

How to install a plugin

Plugins install from marketplaces. A Knowledge Work marketplace is included with Claude by default. Anthropic also offers specialized marketplaces for Financial Services, Legal, and Life Sciences. You can add a marketplace from a GitHub repository as well. Anthropic publishes its own plugins collection on GitHub for anyone who wants to browse or contribute to it.

To install from a marketplace, open the marketplace within Claude, find the plugin you want, and install it. The plugin’s bundled skills and connectors activate immediately. Anything requiring Cowork (hooks, sub-agents) will only run there.

The available marketplaces give you a way to find plugins built for a specific industry or function without searching through unrelated options. You are not limited to one marketplace.

The Knowledge Work marketplace

The default marketplace covers knowledge work broadly: writing, research, analysis, project management, and similar tasks. Most users on a paid plan will find what they need here without adding anything else.

The specialized marketplaces (Financial Services, Legal, Life Sciences) exist for workflows where the default options are not specific enough. A compliance review in a regulated industry often needs connectors and skills that have no place in a general knowledge work context.

Team and Enterprise distribution

On Team and Enterprise plans, owners can distribute plugins across the organization without asking each person to install individually. Anthropic’s Cowork documentation for Team and Enterprise plans lists four distribution states an owner can set: Installed by default, Available, Required, or Not available.

Installed by default means the plugin is already active when a member opens Claude. Available means it is in the marketplace for members to install themselves. Required means members cannot remove it. Not available removes it from the catalog for that organization.

This matters for standardization. A team that needs everyone using the same document connector and summarization skill can set that plugin to Required and know it is consistent across the org.

The distribution controls also give organizations a way to restrict what is available. A company that has approved a specific set of connectors for security or compliance reasons can mark everything else as Not available. Members see only what the organization has cleared.

Worth noting: the four states are per-plugin. You can have one plugin set to Required while another in the same marketplace is Available. You are not making a blanket decision about the entire marketplace.

Plugin vs. skill vs. connector: the short version

The three terms do specific things and they are not interchangeable.

A connector is a one-to-one link between Claude and an external app. Google Drive, Slack, Jira: each needs its own connector. You configure it once and Claude can read from or write to that app within the permissions you set. The connectors and skills guide covers the setup details.

A skill is a single repeatable capability. Summarize a document. Draft a reply. Extract action items. Skills run inside Claude and do not require an external app, though they can use connectors when they need one.

A plugin is the package. It groups connectors and skills (and optionally sub-agents) under one install. When Anthropic or a third-party developer builds a plugin, they are deciding which connectors and skills belong together for a given role, then shipping that decision as a single installable unit.

If you find yourself installing the same connector and skill combination repeatedly for the same type of work, a plugin for that workflow probably exists or is worth building.

The MCP layer underneath

Plugins build on the Model Context Protocol, which is how Claude connects to external tools and data sources at the protocol level. MCP is the standard that makes it possible for a connector in a plugin to talk to an external app in a consistent way, regardless of which app it is. If you want to understand how plugins relate to that underlying standard, and why it matters for things like building your own marketplace from a GitHub repository, the MCP explainer covers the protocol and how it fits into the Claude ecosystem.

Starting with the Cowork course

If you are new to plugins and want to see how they fit into a real workflow alongside skills and connectors, the 7-part beginner course at /learn walks through Claude Cowork from setup to running your first multi-step task. It is the fastest way to see how the pieces connect in practice rather than reading about each one separately.

Plugins are most useful once you have a workflow worth packaging. The course gives you that foundation.