Open Settings → Skills → Explore in the Claude desktop app and you will see dozens of entries named Productivity, Marketing, Sales, Legal and so on. The list grew sharply after Anthropic opened the plugin directory submission portal on September 25, 2026, but the names alone do not tell you what each entry does, how you call it, or whether it can run without someone asking every time. This article walks through the 60 plugins we actually installed and checked against their skill definition files (SKILL.md) as of September 27, 2026, and explains, based on Anthropic's official documentation, how far automatic execution goes.
Skills, plugins and connectors — what is the difference
They sit at different layers. A skill is "how to do the work", a connector is "where the data lives", and a plugin is the install unit that bundles both.
- Skill — a bundle of working instructions: a
SKILL.mdfile (plus supporting files) that spells out how a specific job should be done. According to the official docs, the file has a frontmatter with a description and a markdown body of instructions, and Claude reads the description — what the skill does and when to use it — to load it on its own when relevant. - Connector — a link to an outside app: the channel that lets Claude reach services such as Gmail, Slack, Notion or HubSpot. Connectors use MCP (Model Context Protocol — the standard by which an AI talks to external tools).
- Plugin — skills and connectors packaged together: in its September 25, 2026 blog post Anthropic wrote that "plugins package MCP connectors, Agent Skills, or both, and are the main way to build third-party extensions for Claude." Adding the Sales plugin, for example, brings in 36 skills plus connector definitions for HubSpot, Salesforce, Gmail and more.
That is why the Explore entries carry field names like "Productivity" or "Sales": each one is not a single skill but a plugin holding many skills for that field.
Where to add them — Settings → Skills → Explore
The Customize section of the desktop app's settings menu lists Skills, Connectors and Plugins; the Skills screen has two tabs, My items and Explore.
- Browse the Explore tab or type a name into the search box ("Search skills and plugins"). Filter and sort buttons narrow the list by field.
- Each entry shows its author. "By Anthropic" marks plugins Anthropic built itself; "From Anthropic Directory" marks partner-built plugins listed in the directory. Install counts are shown too (as displayed in the app on September 27, 2026: Productivity about 2.9M, Marketing about 2.2M, Sales and Legal about 1.4M each).
- Press Add on the right to move it into My items. Entries you already added show an on/off toggle instead of the button.
- Plugins that need connectors ask you to sign in to the service (OAuth) the first time you use them. Many skills also work without a connection, from uploaded files (see the tables below).
The list keeps growing. In the same post Anthropic said developers on paid plans can submit plugins at claude.ai/directory/manage/new and that "over the coming weeks, one discovery experience will roll out across Claude and Claude Code." The 60 plugins here are a snapshot as of September 27, 2026; anything added later can be checked the same way.
How they run — automatic, slash command, scheduled task
The short answer: skills run automatically by default, and you can also call them directly. The conditions and limits of the three paths are as follows.
| Path | How it works | Conditions and limits (official docs) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Automatic | When your request matches a skill's description, Claude loads the skill on its own and follows its instructions. The Legal plugin's review-contract skill, for instance, says "use when reviewing vendor or customer contracts", so uploading a contract and asking for a review applies it with no explicit command. | The help center states that "with Code execution and file creation on, Claude will automatically use these tools when relevant. You don't need to explicitly invoke them." The Claude Code docs add that the description is truncated at 1,536 characters, so automatic matching depends on the author writing a clear description. |
| 2. Slash command | Type / plus the skill name in the input box. Per the Claude Code docs the name is the skill's folder name or the name field in its frontmatter. The help center describes typing / in the Microsoft 365 add-in to pick from a list; in chat you can also name the skill in words ("use call-prep to prepare tomorrow's meeting"). | A skill whose author set disable-model-invocation: true can only be called by the user and never runs automatically (meant for side-effect work such as deploys or sending). Conversely, user-invocable: false skills are used only by Claude. |
| 3. Scheduled task | Put a prompt such as "every Monday morning, use the weekly-wrap skill to summarize last week" into Claude's Scheduled Tasks, and a fresh session opens at that time and runs the skill. | Per the Claude Code docs, scheduled runs start as a new cloud session, so only skills added to your account (My items) load; a personal skill that exists only in a folder on your computer is reported as not found. Also, disable-model-invocation: true skills do not run when a scheduled task fires with the skill as its prompt (as of v2.1.196). |
So the answer to "can it run automatically" has two layers. Inside a conversation you simply ask and Claude picks the matching skill (1); to have it run with nobody present, put a prompt that calls the skill into a scheduled task (3). How to create one is covered in our Scheduled Tasks guide.
The 17 work plugins built by Anthropic
These are job-function skill bundles. Their descriptions say most of them work "with the tools your team already uses — or with uploaded files" (Sales) and "with your existing tools or standalone" (Engineering); once a connector is attached they read real data and, when you ask, write back as well.
In the table, "key skills" can be called directly as /name, and "good for scheduled runs" lists skills whose descriptions mention daily or weekly summaries or continuous watching, which makes them natural candidates for a scheduled task (our reading of the descriptions).
| Plugin | What it does | Key skills (total) | Apps worth connecting | Good for scheduled runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Productivity | Task management, daily planning and working memory. Manages tasks in a single TASKS.md file and keeps a memory system that decodes internal shorthand and nicknames. | /start, /update, /task-management, /memory-management (4) | Slack, Notion, Asana, Linear, Jira, monday, ClickUp, Google Calendar, Gmail | /update (sync new tasks from your tracker) |
| Marketing | Content drafting, campaign planning, performance reports, brand-voice review, SEO audits. | /campaign-plan, /draft-content, /brand-review, /seo-audit, /performance-report (8) | Slack, Canva, Figma, HubSpot, Amplitude, Ahrefs, Klaviyo, Supermetrics | /performance-report (at campaign wrap-up) |
| Sales | Call prep, call summaries with follow-up emails, account research, pipeline and forecast. On request it updates CRM records, drafts emails and books meetings. | /call-prep, /call-summary, /deal-review, /pipeline-review, /forecast, /inbox-sweep (36) | HubSpot, Salesforce, Close, Gmail, Google Calendar, Gong, Zoom, Slack and 23 in all | /daily-briefing (morning), /weekly-wrap (weekly), /deal-signals (continuous watch), /end-of-day |
| Legal | Contract review against a playbook with redlines, rapid NDA triage (GREEN/YELLOW/RED), compliance checks, e-signature routing. | /review-contract, /triage-nda, /compliance-check, /signature-request (9) | Slack, Box, Egnyte, Confluence, DocuSign, Gmail | /brief (daily scan of legal-relevant items) |
| Human Resources | Recruiting pipeline, interview design, offer letters, onboarding checklists, compensation analysis, plain-language policy answers. | /interview-prep, /draft-offer, /onboarding, /comp-analysis, /policy-lookup (9) | Slack, Google Calendar, Gmail, Notion, Confluence | /recruiting-pipeline (hiring status refresh) |
| Customer Support | Ticket triage (P1–P4), customer-facing response drafts, escalation packages, turning resolved issues into KB articles. | /ticket-triage, /draft-response, /customer-escalation, /kb-article (5) | Intercom, HubSpot, Guru, Slack, Notion, Gmail | — |
| Finance | Journal entries, reconciliations, financial statements and variance analysis, month-end close management, SOX testing workpapers. | /journal-entry, /reconciliation, /financial-statements, /variance-analysis, /close-management (8) | Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Slack, Gmail | /close-management (close calendar tracking) |
| Data | SQL writing and optimization, dataset exploration, statistics, visualizations, HTML dashboards, QA before sharing. | /analyze, /write-query, /explore-data, /build-dashboard, /validate-data (10) | Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Hex, Amplitude | — |
| Design | Design critique, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audits, design-system management, UX copy, developer handoff specs, research synthesis. | /design-critique, /accessibility-review, /design-handoff, /ux-copy (7) | Figma, Slack, Linear, Jira, Notion, Intercom | — |
| Engineering | Standup updates, code review, debugging, architecture decision records, deploy checklists, incident response and postmortems, technical docs. | /code-review, /debug, /incident-response, /deploy-checklist, /standup (10) | GitHub, Linear, Jira, PagerDuty, Datadog, Slack | /standup (morning activity summary) |
| Operations | Vendor reviews, process docs (RACI, SOPs), change requests, capacity planning, risk and compliance tracking, runbooks, status reports. | /vendor-review, /process-doc, /runbook, /status-report, /risk-assessment (9) | Slack, Google Calendar, Gmail, Notion, Jira, Asana | /status-report (weekly or monthly) |
| Product Management | Feature specs (PRDs), roadmap updates, sprint planning, metrics reviews, competitive briefs, research synthesis, stakeholder updates. | /write-spec, /roadmap-update, /sprint-planning, /metrics-review, /stakeholder-update (8) | Linear, Jira, Notion, Figma, Amplitude, Pendo, Intercom | /metrics-review (weekly or monthly), /stakeholder-update |
| Enterprise Search | One query across connected email, chat, docs and wikis with source attribution; a digest of what happened while you were away. | /search, /digest, /knowledge-synthesis (5) | Slack, Notion, Guru, Confluence, Asana, Gmail | /digest (daily or weekly digest) |
| Bio Research | Literature search, single-cell RNA-seq QC, nf-core pipelines, converting instrument output to the Allotrope format, research problem selection. | /start, /single-cell-rna-qc, /nextflow-development, /scientific-problem-selection (6) | PubMed, bioRxiv, ChEMBL, Benchling, BioRender and 11 in all | — |
| Small Business | An operations bundle for small businesses — invoice chasing, bill processing, payroll prep, inventory planning, lead finding, review management, tax-season packets. Its description states "you approve every step that touches money or customers." | /smb-onboard, /business-pulse, /invoice-chase, /inventory-planner, /lead-finder (44) | QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Square, Gusto, HubSpot, Zapier and 35 in all | /monday-brief, /marketing-monday, /report-pack (set cadence), /speed-to-lead (inquiry watch), /build-agent (put a repeated task on a schedule) |
| PDF Viewer | Open a PDF inside the conversation to annotate, highlight, stamp, fill forms, place signatures and download the result. | /view-pdf (1) | None (built-in viewer) | — |
| Cowork Plugin Management | Create a new plugin for your own tools or adjust an existing plugin's connectors and behavior. | /create-cowork-plugin, /cowork-plugin-customizer (2) | None | — |
The 43 partner plugins from the directory
These are the entries marked "From Anthropic Directory". Most only make sense if you already have an account with that company, and you sign in to the service (OAuth) on first use. Grouped by field.
Marketing, design and social
| Plugin (author) | What it does | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Voice (Tribe AI) | Finds brand material scattered across Notion, Drive, Confluence, Gong and Slack, distills brand guidelines, then applies them to generated content. 3 skills (/discover-brand, /generate-guidelines, /enforce-voice). | Connections to where the material lives (Notion, Confluence, Box, Figma, Gong, etc.) |
| canva (Canva) | Create, edit, review, resize for social and brand-check Canva designs. 6 skills. | Canva account |
| Adobe for Creativity (Adobe) | Batch photo edits, platform resizing, template designs, PDF/DOCX/PPTX conversions, quick video cuts and more — 15 skills. | Adobe account |
| Adspirer Ads Agent (Adspirer) | Keyword research, campaign creation, wasted-spend and creative-fatigue detection across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Amazon and ChatGPT Ads. 15 skills and 5 slash commands (/performance-review, /wasted-spend, etc.). | Free Adspirer account (OAuth) |
| Postiz (Nevo David) | Schedule and analyze posts across 28+ platforms including X, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. | Postiz account |
| Cloudinary (Cloudinary) | Upload, manage, optimize and transform images and videos in natural language. | Cloudinary account |
| Figma (Figma) | Figma MCP server plus 14 skills for design-to-code, design generation, diagrams, slides and FigJam. | Figma account |
| Miro (Miro) | Read Miro boards, create diagrams, and explain, review or spec code on a board. 3 skills. | Miro account |
Sales, customers and research
| Plugin (author) | What it does | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Common Room (Common Room) | Account and contact research, call prep, outreach drafts for email, LinkedIn and phone, prospect lists. Slash commands /weekly-brief and /generate-account-plan. | Common Room account |
| ZoomInfo (ZoomInfo) | List building, record enrichment, decision-maker search and intent monitoring on 100M companies and 300M contacts. 35 skills (/daily-brief, /company-news-monitor, etc.). | ZoomInfo account |
| Vibe Prospecting (vibeprospecting.ai) | Lead lists, company research and outreach personalization from B2B data. | Service account |
| Intercom (Intercom) | Search conversations, analyze support patterns, look up contacts and companies, install the Messenger. 4 skills. | Intercom workspace |
| Airtable (Airtable) | Work with bases, schemas and records, with templates for marketing, product and sales ops. 8 skills. | Airtable account |
| Browser Use (Browser Use) | Browse, scrape, fill forms, test sites and take screenshots with your Chrome or a cloud browser. | Chrome or Browser Use Cloud |
| Bright Data (Bright Data) | Scrape pages as markdown, structured Google search results, extraction from 40+ sites, price comparison and competitive intel. 21 skills. | Bright Data account |
| Nimble (Nimble) | Live web search, URL reading and research agents that return cited findings. 15 skills (/company-deep-dive, /brand-mention-monitor, /launch-monitor, etc.). | Nimble account |
| SearchFit SEO (SearchFit.ai) | Site audits, content strategy, on-page optimization, schema markup, keyword clustering, AI visibility. Described as "free" and "works with any website or codebase". 11 skills. | No separate account (per its description) |
Finance and investing
| Plugin (author) | What it does | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Bigdata.com (RavenPack) | Research on stocks, companies, sectors and economies — valuation snapshots, peer comparables, investment memos, earnings previews and digests, risk and catalyst monitoring. 27 skills. | Bigdata.com account |
| Daloopa (Daloopa) | Model building, DCF, comp sheets, earnings prep and review, research notes on institutional-grade data. 21 skills. | Daloopa account |
| LSEG (LSEG) | Bond pricing and yield curves, FX carry, option volatility, macro dashboards. 8 skills and 8 slash commands. | LSEG data account |
| S&P Global (Kensho) | Company tearsheets, earnings previews, transaction summaries. 3 skills. | S&P Global account |
| Carta Cap Table / Carta CRM / Carta Investors (Carta) | Cap tables, grants, 409A and waterfalls (22); investor CRM search, add and update (26); fund data, regulatory reporting and AGM deck generation (17). | Carta account |
Development, data and infrastructure
| Plugin (author) | What it does | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Base44 (base44) | Build and deploy Base44 full-stack apps with the CLI and SDK. 5 skills. | Base44 account |
| Wix (Wix) | Build Wix sites and apps; manage eCommerce, CMS and dashboard extensions. 10 skills. | Wix account |
| Sanity (Sanity) | Content modeling, schema deployment, migrations, Studio upgrades. 8 skills and 4 slash commands. | Sanity project |
| Prisma (Prisma) | Provision Postgres, run migrations, execute SQL (MCP server, 0 skills). | Prisma account |
| PlanetScale (PlanetScale) | Access organizations, databases, branches, schema and Insights (MCP server, 0 skills). | PlanetScale account |
| CockroachDB (Cockroach Labs) | Schema exploration, SQL optimization, cluster operations and security audits. 34 skills plus DBA, developer and operator agents. | CockroachDB cluster |
| Atlan (Atlan) | Search data assets, lineage, glossary and quality rules (MCP server, 0 skills). | Atlan account |
| DataRobot (DataRobot) | Model training, deployment, predictions, monitoring, explainability, feature engineering. 16 skills. | DataRobot account |
| Datadog (Datadog) | Query logs, metrics, traces and dashboards. Marked "in preview" in its description. 5 skills. | Datadog account |
| Fastly (Fastly) | Fastly CLI, Fiddle, NGWAF, stats and other developer skills — 10 in all. | Fastly account |
| Twilio Developer Kit (Twilio) | Setup, planning and guardrail skills across SMS, Voice, WhatsApp, email (SendGrid), AI agents and 30+ products. 57 skills. | Twilio account |
| Zoom (Zoom) | Plan, build and debug Zoom integrations across REST APIs, SDKs, webhooks and bots. 55 skills. | Zoom developer account |
| ServiceNow SDK (ServiceNow) | Create, edit and deploy ServiceNow apps with the Fluent SDK. | ServiceNow instance |
| Product Tracking (Accoil) | From codebase scan to tracking plan to instrumentation code for product analytics. 7 skills. | A codebase (no account) |
| Vanta (Vanta) | List compliance tests and guide remediation of failing ones. 3 skills. | Vanta account |
| AI-Firstify (TechWolf) | Audit and re-engineer a project against 9 AI-first design principles and 7 patterns. 1 skill. | None |
| Desktop Commander (Desktop Commander) | Local terminal commands, process management, and file work on text, PDF, DOCX and Excel. 6 skills. | Local MCP server install |
| Box (Box) | Box content workflows, shared links, metadata, Box AI retrieval, legal workflows. 5 skills. | Box account |
| Zapier (Zapier) | Discover, enable and run Zapier actions across 9,000+ apps. 4 skills. | Zapier account |
How to Use It
The safest order is: pick one job function, add one plugin, try it with uploaded files first, then attach connectors.
- Step 1 — start with files only: add the Sales plugin, upload a call transcript and ask for a follow-up email; the
call-summaryskill applies automatically. Check that the output follows the steps in the skill description before connecting anything. - Step 2 — connect: if you are happy with the result, connect Gmail and your CRM. From then on Claude reads real threads and records, and writes to the CRM only when you ask (per the Sales description).
- Step 3 — automate with a scheduled task: put what you need every morning (for example
/daily-briefing,/digest,/standup) into a scheduled-task prompt. The skill must be in My items, and steps that need human approval (sending, paying) are designed to stop in scheduled runs, so handle those yourself after checking.
Non-developers do well starting with one Anthropic-built plugin for their own role (Productivity, Marketing, HR and so on); developers get immediate value from Engineering plus a GitHub connection for standups and code review. Add a partner plugin only if you already use that service.
Things to watch
- It is third-party code — Anthropic's official plugin repository states: "Make sure you trust a plugin before installing, updating, or using it. Anthropic does not control what MCP servers, files, or other software are included in plugins and cannot verify that they will work as intended or that they won't change." Partner plugins send data to that company's servers.
- Check connection scopes — read which permissions (read, write) the OAuth screen asks for before approving. Even when a skill with write access (CRM updates, sending mail, payments) says it acts "only when you ask" or "after approval", it is safer to watch the first run yourself.
- Automatic invocation depends on description quality — if a skill fires in the wrong situation or fails to fire when it should, naming it with a slash command is the reliable path.
- The list and install counts keep changing — the 60 plugins and counts here are a snapshot from September 27, 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Does adding a plugin connect its connectors automatically?
No. The plugin only carries the list of connectors it can use; the actual connection happens when you sign in and approve each service on first use. Without a connection it works from uploaded files.
Q. Will Claude use a skill even if I do not call it?
Yes, automatic invocation is the default. The help center says that with code execution and file creation on, Claude uses skills automatically when relevant. Skills the author locked with disable-model-invocation: true must be called by you.
Q. Can it run when nobody is around?
Yes, through a scheduled task whose prompt calls the skill. Scheduled runs start as a new cloud session, so only skills added to your account load; personal skills kept only in a folder on your computer are not found.
Q. Do the English-named skills work with requests in other languages?
Yes. Descriptions are in English, but Claude matches on meaning, so a Korean or other-language request still triggers them. Output follows the language of your request; add "write it in Korean" to be sure.
Related articles
- Claude plugins explained — installation and recommended plugins
- The complete guide to Claude Scheduled Tasks
- How to build and enable your own Claude Skills
- What is an Agent Skill? A beginner's explanation
- Claude connectors and MCP catalog
Sources: Anthropic blog "Build plugins for Claude with the directory submission portal" (2026-09-25), Claude Help Center "Use skills in Claude", Claude Code docs "Extend Claude with skills", the anthropics/claude-plugins-official README, and the plugin.json and SKILL.md files of the 60 plugins installed in the desktop app on September 27, 2026.