BIG Claude Code Update: Plugins

Okay, so we'll be going over all the brand  new Claude Code features and updates from

the last week. So firstly, we have a brand  new plugin system and plugins are basically   a way of combining slash commands, subagents, MCP  servers and hooks, which are all existing features   within Claude Code together into like a nicer  package. And before going over how to use it,   it basically makes it easy to standardize Claude  Code environments around a set of best shared   practices. So you can enforce standards across  the entire team. You can support users. If you   make like packages yourself, you can make a plugin  that allows users to use your package in the way   that it should be used within Claude Code. You can  share workflows, you can have teams connecting to   internal tools and data sources via MCP servers  and a bunch of other things as well. So it's kind   of like the brand new Gemini CLI feature that came  out one day prior called Gemini CLI extensions. So   it's pretty interesting how they're releasing  features the same feature at a similar time.    So it's almost as though they're like spying  on each other or having insiders. But anyways,   to get started with plugins, you once  you find a GitHub repo replace that has a  . claude-plugin/marketplace. json file defined. Like  you can see this repo over here. And this is the   structure of the file. And then with this GitHub  repository, you want to copy the URL of it. So   this part of the URL and then go to Claude Code.   Make sure that you have it updated to the latest   version by doing claude update and then run Claude  and then do /plugin. And then you can see you can   browse and install, manage and uninstall, add  marketplace or manage marketplaces. So if you go   to browse and install, you will see nothing right  now. So go back and then go to add marketplace,   paste in the GitHub URL that has a folder . claude-plugin and then press enter and that   will begin to load the marketplace. So you can see  that marketplace has been added. We can also load   in the default Claude Code marketplace. So if we  copy the URL for Claude Code, go to plugin again,   add marketplace, paste in this marketplace. That  will also load the Claude Code marketplace. So   you can find a bunch of them online. I will link  them down below as well. And then once you have   the marketplaces set up, you can go to /plugin  and then do browse and install plugins. You can   see the Claude Code official marketplace has  five plugins available, whereas the Claude Code   Templates marketplace has 10 plugins available.   So I'll go to Claude Code plugins marketplace,   choose feature-dev and I can even market for  installation or install now. So I'll mark this   for installation and then choose security guidance  as well, mark that for installation and then do   install selected. And if you want to uninstall  plugins, then you can go to /plugin again,   manage and uninstall plugins, select the one  that you have, and then do uninstall now or mark   for uninstallation. And in some cases, you may  actually have to restart Claude Code to apply the   changes. So I'll do that right now. And then once  you have the plugin installed, you can do /plugin   and you can see some of your plugins appear  here. So there's feature-dev and that is a custom   /command, I think. So if I press enter on this, it  will start running this command. And if I wanted   to see what this plugin was actually doing, then  I would go to marketplace and then if I search for   feature-dev, then I can see right over here, the  source directory is here inside the repository and   it can also set a version as well. So plugins  can be updated. So if you're making a plugin,   then you want to update the version as you go  along. So at least for the feature-dev plugin,   it should be here. So it seems it comes  away with these agents. So if I do /agents,   then I can see I have the feature-dev agents. From  the plugin and I can trigger any of them by using   an @ command. So I can do @feature-dev and that  will trigger that agent if I call it. And then   I can go to /commands and then I can see this  command, which is a feature-dev command that I   triggered earlier. So I think one of the powers of  this is that Supabase, for example, can have their   own official like plugin and it can be updated as  Supabase is also updated and it can make sure that   anything that you're using Supabase for, whether  that's migrations or whatever, there are slash   commands built just for that. And there can be a  sub agent with a Supabase plugin that integrates   Supabase throughout your entire project and a  bunch of other things. So it just makes sharing   things easier essentially. And there is actually  a documentation page that I won't be going over of   how you can make a plugin, how the manifest  files exist, and everything else to do with   making a plugin. But I imagine most of you won't  be making them. You'll just be using them instead.

Something else that Anthropic have been doing  is making a bunch of improvements to the cloud   version of Claude Code. So I don't have access  to it because when I go to any of these URLs,   then it doesn't work for me. But basically it's  like how Codex CLI can also run in the cloud. You   have your own default cloud environment and you  can now set the network access. You can then enter   in your code for the project that you have. You  can then enter in your environment variable keys   and then also just running commands on a version  of Claude Code in the cloud. Another thing they've

done is added more comprehensive error messages  when you run /doctor. And that just ensures that   all the Claude Code settings that you have are  working properly. They made some improvements

to /help. And I think they added this new tab  basically, which is a custom commands tab. And   then just made this slightly easier to read. But I  actually did not know that this specific shortcut   existed for memorizing things. So maybe if I try  it now and say like option hashtag, and then I can   add something to memory. So yeah, I think this new  help thing is pretty good because I did not know   that this memorize shortcut existed. Changes to  the 'verbose' setting in config now persist across

all sessions. So doing /config and then where it  says 'verbose' output, turning that to true seems   to persist, but I thought it already did before.   They also say that they reduce the system prompt

size by 1. 4 K tokens. So I was quite interested  in knowing what they actually changed. So I found   the original system prompt online from about 10  days ago here. And then I used Proxyman to then   intercept the request and go into the Anthropic  API servers and extracted the system prompt from   here. And then I gave it to ChatGPT 4o and I asked  it what changed and it basically gave a list over   here. So it seems that nothing major has changed  besides like consolidating a couple of things and   rewriting it to be like shorter. They also now  allow you to disable and enable MCP servers by

tagging so doing /mcp. You can press enter on  one of the servers and then do disable like   this. But it seems a tagging or mentioning thing  doesn't work because when I press enter to toggle,   then nothing actually happens. But anyways, they  also now added tab completion for shell commands

in bash mode. So you can do something like shift  one, which will get the exclamation mark and it   should look like this and that will enable bash  mode. And then you can do like CD and start   writing something in and then press tab and it  will autocomplete whatever is there to complete.    So you can see it works just as you would do in  normal bash mode. You can also now edit the prompt

in your system's configured text editor. So if  you start writing a prompt like subscribe to a   channel, then you can press control G and it will  open up a Vim and then you can finish off writing   a prompt, putting on new lines and all that stuff.   And then in my case, I can finally do colon QA,   press finish, and then I can press enter on the  prompt. So it makes it slightly easier to write   longer prompts. They now also added drag and drop  support for files and folders in the chat. And

that basically means that if you have something  like VS code installed, then you open up like   the Claude Code plugin that you should also have  installed, something like this. Then you can drag   any file, for example, the schema. json file  into here, but you have to hold shift to drop   it into here. And now you can see it's tagged.   It seems they also fixed some counting errors,

they improved some message rendering. Yeah, it  seems that there are no other major improvements   here. But yeah, the biggest improvement seems to  be the new plugin system. I'm quite excited to   see what kind of plugins people make with it and  whether developers have open source projects like   Supabase, for example, or some other companies  decide to make plugins to help people integrate   their own technology with their own stack more  easily in Claude Code. Anyways, I do make these   kind of videos whenever some new big development  happens with Claude Code or some new features   were added. So do subscribe to the channel if  you do want to see more of that kind of stuff.