Claude Plugins Guide (2026): How to Install Them and Which Ones to Use

In the Claude ecosystem, a plugin is a package that bundles several extensions — skills, connectors, slash commands, and sub-agents — into a single install. Plugins started as a Claude Code (developer tool) concept, and on January 30, 2026 Anthropic officially announced plugin support for chat and Cowork, opening them up to everyday users. This guide explains what plugins are, where and how to install them, and which ones are actually worth using, based on official documentation as of July 2026.

What exactly is a plugin?

A plugin bundles skills (instruction files that teach Claude how to handle a specific kind of work), connectors (the channels that link Claude to external services), slash commands (actions you trigger by typing /name in the input box), and sub-agents (helper agents that take on sub-tasks). Installing one is less like installing a single app and more like bringing in an entire toolkit for a role.

A sales plugin, for example, can ship a skill that encodes your sales process, a CRM connector, and commands that run everything from prospect research to meeting follow-ups — all in one install. According to Anthropic's official repository, every component of a plugin is just markdown and JSON files, so you can open and edit them without writing code.

Where can you use plugins?

Per the official Help Center, you can install and use plugins in chat on the web, the Chat tab in Claude Desktop, and Claude Cowork. Coverage differs by component: the skills bundled in a plugin work across all three surfaces, while hooks and sub-agents run only in Cowork (they appear grayed out in chat). Separately, the developer tool Claude Code has its own plugin system and marketplaces.

At announcement, Cowork plugin support was described as a research preview for paid Claude users. Conditions like this can change with updates, so the safest reference is what your own account actually shows.

How to install ① — Claude apps & Cowork

1. Open the plugin catalog. In Cowork, open the Cowork tab, then go to Customize. You can also browse the full collection at claude.com/plugins.
2. Click Install on the plugin you want. Uploading a custom plugin file — one you built yourself or received from a colleague — is also supported.
3. Success check: type "/" in the chat input or click the "+" button; if the skills from your installed plugin appear in the list, it worked.

Plugins you add yourself on Claude Desktop and in Cowork are saved locally to your computer, not to a server. In Cowork, you can also open an installed plugin and click Customize in the upper right corner to start a session where Claude tailors that plugin's skills and connectors to how you work.

How to install ② — Claude Code

Claude Code ships with Anthropic's official marketplace (claude-plugins-official) already registered. Run /plugin and browse the Discover tab, or install directly by name:

/plugin install github@claude-plugins-official

If Claude Code says the plugin can't be found, your marketplace listing is outdated — refresh it and retry:

/plugin marketplace update claude-plugins-official

Community-submitted plugins live in a separate marketplace; add it once, then install with the name@claude-community format.

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-community

Recommended plugins ① — knowledge work (chat & Cowork)

Start with Anthropic's own open-source collection (anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins) — the plugins Anthropic's team was using internally at launch. It covers:

• Sales — prospect research, meeting prep and follow-ups
• Marketing — content and campaign workflows
• Legal — in-house legal workflows such as contract review
• Finance — reconciliation, statements, variance analysis (e.g. the /finance:reconciliation command)
• Customer support & product management — handling inquiries, writing specs (e.g. /product-management:write-spec)
• Data analysis — SQL, statistical analysis, dashboards
• Enterprise search — one query across email, chat, docs, and wikis
• Productivity & bio research — project context management, early-stage R&D tooling
• Plugin management — a meta-plugin for building or customizing plugins

Per the Help Center, the official library keeps growing into areas like HR, engineering, design, and operations. Because these plugins bundle connectors, services like Google Drive or Slack come pre-wired for the workflow instead of being connected one by one.

Recommended plugins ② — Claude Code (development)

In the official marketplace, four categories see the most use:

• External integrations — bundles with pre-configured MCP servers: source control github and gitlab; project management atlassian (Jira/Confluence), asana, linear, notion; design figma; infrastructure vercel, firebase, supabase; communication slack; monitoring sentry.
• Development workflows — commit-commands for commit/push/PR flows, pr-review-toolkit with specialized PR review agents, agent-sdk-dev for the Claude Agent SDK, and plugin-dev for building your own plugins.
• Automatic security review — security-guidance reviews each change Claude makes for common vulnerabilities and has it fix issues in the same session.
• Code intelligence (LSP) — pyright-lsp (Python), typescript-lsp, gopls-lsp (Go), rust-analyzer-lsp (Rust), and more. They give Claude automatic diagnostics after edits and precise code navigation, but each requires the corresponding language server binary installed on your machine.

Deploying plugins across a team (Team & Enterprise)

On Team and Enterprise plans, organization owners can distribute plugins to everyone via Organization settings > Plugins. Both Cowork and Skills must be enabled for the organization first. Two distribution methods are supported — manual ZIP upload and GitHub repository syncing — and admins can mark specific plugins as auto-installed or required. Plugins distributed this way appear in both chat and Cowork.

FAQ

Q. Where do I get the "Claude Excel plugin"?
Claude for Excel is officially an add-in, not a plugin, and it installs through a different path. See our Claude in Excel guide for the steps.

Q. Plugin vs. skill vs. connector — what's the difference?
A skill is one "way of working"; a connector is one "external link." A plugin packages these together around a role. If you only need skills, the skills library roundup is faster; if you only need connectors, see the recommended connectors roundup.

Q. Does it work on the free plan?
At announcement, chat/Cowork plugins were described as a research preview for paid plans. Policies may have changed since, so the accurate check is whether the plugin menu appears in your own account.

Q. Where are installed plugins stored?
Plugins you add yourself on Claude Desktop and in Cowork are saved locally on your computer. Organization-distributed plugins are managed through your org's plugin marketplace.

Related reading

• What are Agent Skills? A beginner-friendly explanation
• Claude skills by use case
• What is MCP? A non-developer explanation
• Claude connectors & MCP catalog
• Automating work with Claude

This article is based on Anthropic's official blog post (Customize Cowork with plugins, Jan 30, 2026), Claude Help Center articles (Use plugins in Claude / Manage plugins for your organization), and the Claude Code documentation (Discover and install plugins). Menu names, availability, and plugin lineups can change with updates, so treat what you see on screen as the source of truth.