plugin-template

A working plugin, ready to clone:

gh repo create {{ORG}}/[TBD-name] --template {{ORG}}/plugin-template --private

It passes validation on first clone, which is a meaningfully different starting point from an empty directory and a specification.

Before you use this

Consider whether you need a repository yet. claude plugin init <name> scaffolds into ~/.claude/skills/, and any folder there containing .claude-plugin/plugin.json loads as <name>@skills-dir on the next session, with no marketplace and no install step.

Move to a repository when other people need the thing. Move to the catalog when it has proven itself. Working the other way round produces a registry full of plugins nobody uses.

The description field

The single highest-leverage thing new authors get wrong. Claude decides whether to load a skill by matching the request against the description, so write it as a trigger condition rather than a summary.

evals/cases.jsonl exists to measure this: pairs of requests that should and should not trigger the skill. Fill it in before publishing.

Next

Read plugins/conventions in {{ORG}}/agent-plugins. This template is derived from it, and the exemplar goes further.