Marketplaces are how skills get shared between people without anyone copying files by hand. This walks through exactly how one works, using a real one — not a hypothetical.
If the words "skill," "plugin," and "marketplace" are new to you, start with what Claude Skills actually are first.
What a marketplace actually is
A marketplace is a catalog of plugins, hosted as a git repository. Using one is a two-step process, and the two steps do genuinely different things:
- Add the marketplace — registers the catalog so you can browse it. Nothing is installed yet.
- Install a plugin from it — this is the step that actually adds anything to your setup.
Think of adding a marketplace as adding an app store to your phone: you now have access to browse its listing, but nothing downloads until you tap install on something specific.
A real, worked example
The Claude Skills Library is a public marketplace with 40 free skills across five professions — software engineer, lawyer, doctor, marketing manager, and product manager. It is a genuinely live marketplace, not a demo, so every command below is exactly what you would run.
Step 1: add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add ambikaiyer29/claude-skills-library
GitHub repositories are added in owner/repo format. This also works with a full git URL (/plugin marketplace add https://gitlab.com/company/plugins.git) or a local folder (/plugin marketplace add ./my-marketplace) if you are testing your own.
Step 2: install a plugin
/plugin install lawyer-skills@claude-skills-library
The format is always plugin-name@marketplace-name. This opens a details pane showing exactly what the plugin contains, then asks where to install it:
| Scope | Means |
|---|---|
| User | Available in all your projects |
| Project | Shared with everyone working in this repository |
| Local | Just you, just this repository |
Prefer to browse visually first? Run /plugin on its own to open the plugin manager, then use the Discover tab — this lists every plugin from every marketplace you have added, with a Will install section showing exactly what components (skills, agents, hooks) each one adds before you commit to installing it.
Step 3: activate
/reload-plugins
Expect this to say 0 skills. That count only covers a plugin's commands/ folder; skill-based plugins ship their skills in a skills/ folder instead, which this particular summary line does not include. It is a cosmetic quirk of the count, not a sign anything failed.
Step 4: confirm and use
/plugin list
confirms what is actually installed. From here, skills are model-invoked — describe a task naturally and Claude applies the right one on its own, no command needed. You can also call one explicitly, namespaced to its plugin: /lawyer-skills:reviewing-contracts.
Managing what's installed
/plugin marketplace update claude-skills-library # refresh the catalog
/plugin disable lawyer-skills@claude-skills-library # turn off without removing
/plugin uninstall lawyer-skills@claude-skills-library
Well-maintained marketplaces derive each plugin's version from its actual content, so an update to a skill produces a new version automatically — running marketplace update picks up genuine content changes, not just a manually bumped number.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
Marketplace not found | It has to be added before you can install from it — re-run step 1 |
| Plugin not found in the marketplace | Your local catalog copy is stale — /plugin marketplace update <name>, then retry |
/reload-plugins says 0 skills | Expected for skill-only plugins, not a failure — see above |
| Skills genuinely don't appear after reload | rm -rf ~/.claude/plugins/cache, restart Claude Code, reinstall |
/plugin command not recognised | Update Claude Code, then restart your terminal |
Not using Claude Code?
Marketplaces and the /plugin command are Claude Code (CLI) features. If you use claude.ai, Cowork, or Claude Desktop instead, those don't read plugins at all — skills are uploaded individually as zip files under Customize → Skills → Add, one skill per upload, with the skill's folder at the zip's root. The Claude Skills Library above offers the same 40 skills as individual zips for exactly this case — see what Claude Skills are and how to install them for the full walkthrough of that path.
Building your own marketplace
Once you have written a few skills worth sharing, packaging them as a marketplace is a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json file listing your plugins plus one plugin.json per plugin — see how to create a Claude Skill for the skill-writing side of this, and Anthropic's own plugin marketplace documentation for the full manifest schema.
Related Resources
- What Are Claude Skills? The Complete Beginner's Guide — the concepts this guide assumes
- How to Create a Claude Skill — write one worth sharing
- Claude Skills Examples by Profession — all 40 skills in this marketplace, explained
- Browse Claude Skills by profession — download zips for claude.ai and Cowork