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A packaged bundle of slash commands, subagents, hooks, MCP servers, and skills you install into Claude Code as one unit.
A plugin is a versioned, shareable directory (distributed via a marketplace) that drops a coherent set of capabilities into the agent at once instead of you hand-configuring each piece. Installing one can register new /commands, specialist subagents, lifecycle hooks, and MCP servers together. Example: a 'stripe' plugin that ships payment-integration skills plus an MCP server for the Stripe API. It's the distribution format that lets teams standardize their agent setup and share it like any other dependency.
Plainly
Think of Plugin as a tool from the builder toolbox. A packaged bundle of slash commands, subagents, hooks, MCP servers, and skills you install into Claude Code as one unit.
In practice
Use it when you are installing, editing, testing, reviewing, or shipping code. In practice, define the owner, input, output, and failure mode before you rely on it.