Engineering Paved Path

my-monkeys

A Claude Code plugin marketplace — a catalog that distributes plugins (skills, commands, agents, hooks, MCP servers) to Claude Code users.

Structure

my-monkeys/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── marketplace.json          # marketplace catalog (required, repo root)
└── plugins/
    └── example-plugin/           # template folder — one directory per plugin
        ├── .claude-plugin/
        │   └── plugin.json       # plugin manifest (name, description, version)
        ├── skills/               # <skill-name>/SKILL.md
        ├── commands/             # flat <command-name>.md slash commands
        └── agents/               # <agent-name>.md subagents

The example-plugin folders are placeholders (currently .gitkeep). marketplace.json ships with an empty plugins: [] until you register your first plugin.

Add your first plugin

1. Create the manifest plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json:

   {
     "name": "<name>",
     "description": "What this plugin does",
     "version": "1.0.0"
   }
   

2. Add at least one component, e.g. a skill at plugins/<name>/skills/<skill>/SKILL.md:

   ---
   description: Short description of what the skill does
   ---
   
   Instructions Claude follows when this skill runs.
   

3. Register it in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (relative to pluginRoot: "./plugins"):

   "plugins": [
     {
       "name": "<name>",
       "source": "<name>",
       "description": "What this plugin does",
       "version": "1.0.0"
     }
   ]
   

Test locally

claude plugin validate .                 # validate marketplace.json + plugin manifests
claude plugin marketplace add ./         # register this marketplace locally
claude plugin install <name>@my-monkeys  # install a plugin from it

Release & rollback

Helper scripts live in scripts/ (Bash — run in Git Bash on Windows, or any shell on macOS/Linux/CI). They use a semver git-tag model: each release is an annotated tag vX.Y.Z, and a rollback restores a previous tag as a new forward commit (no force-push).

# Cut a release: validate the marketplace, tag vX.Y.Z, push.
scripts/release.sh 1.0.0

# Also bump a specific plugin's version before tagging (needs jq):
scripts/release.sh 1.1.0 --plugin example-plugin

# Preview without changing anything:
scripts/release.sh 2.0.0 --dry-run

# Roll back to a known-good tag (safe, non-destructive):
scripts/rollback.sh v1.0.0

Both scripts run claude plugin validate . first, require a clean tree on main, and accept --no-push, --dry-run, and -y. Users receive changes when they run /plugin marketplace update. See scripts/release.sh --help / scripts/rollback.sh --help for all options.

Prerequisite: configure git identity once (git config user.name / user.email) so tags and commits can be created.

Notes

• name (marketplace and plugins) must be kebab-case (lowercase + hyphens).
• A plugin's name is an immutable slug once published — change the UI label via displayName, never by renaming name.
• Relative source paths only resolve when the marketplace is added via git or a local path, not via a direct URL to marketplace.json.
• Omit version (here or in plugin.json) to treat every git commit as a new version; set it and bump on each release to pin.