Key takeaways
- Skills are instructions, hooks are deterministic shell commands, MCP servers connect outside tools, and plugins package any of them.
- Superpowers is the most-starred skills framework; ECC is the large collection people search for as Everything Claude Code.
- Graphify and Remotion each do one job well: a queryable code graph, and videos made in code.
- Install from the official marketplace first, read hooks and MCP configs before enabling, and add one extension at a time.
Searches for Claude Code add-ons have exploded this year: people are looking for one GitHub repo that makes the agent better, a skill that makes videos, a plugin that maps a codebase. Most of what turns up is real and some of it is very good. Before installing any of it, it helps to know what the four kinds of extension are, because a plugin can carry all of the others. Here are the definitions from Anthropic's documentation and the repositories worth knowing, each checked on GitHub on 29 October 2026.
Skills, hooks, MCP servers and plugins: what is the difference?
Claude Code has four ways to extend it, and they do different jobs.
| Extension | What it is | Where it lives | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skill | A SKILL.md file of instructions, with optional scripts beside it. Claude loads it when its description matches the task, or you call it with /skill-name | ~/.claude/skills/ (yours), .claude/skills/ (the project's), or inside a plugin | Repeatable ways of working: a review checklist, a deploy routine, a house style |
| Hook | A shell command Claude Code runs at fixed points in its lifecycle, such as before a tool call or after an edit | The hooks block of a settings file, or a plugin | Things that must always happen: formatting, blocking a command, a notification |
| MCP server | A connection, over the open Model Context Protocol, to an outside tool, database or API | Added with claude mcp add, or bundled in a plugin | Letting Claude read and act on a system directly instead of working from what you paste |
| Plugin | A package that can bundle skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, language servers and output styles, installed from a marketplace | A folder with .claude-plugin/plugin.json; installed with /plugin | Sharing a whole setup across projects or a team |
Two details save confusion. Custom slash commands have been merged into skills: a file in .claude/commands/ and a skill in .claude/skills/ both create the same kind of command. And hooks are the only one of the four that is deterministic; a skill shapes what Claude tries, a hook decides what happens regardless. That is the same split the permissions guide makes between instructions and rules.
The repositories worth knowing (checked 29 October 2026)
| Repository | What it is | Stars | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| anthropics/claude-plugins-official | Anthropic's own curated plugin directory: internal plugins plus vetted third-party ones | 44.4k | Apache-2.0 (each plugin has its own) |
| obra/superpowers | A skills framework that makes the agent brainstorm, plan, test first and review its own work | 303.9k | MIT |
| affaan-m/ECC | The large harness collection people search for as Everything Claude Code: agents, skills, hooks, rules and memory | 292.0k | MIT |
| Graphify-Labs/graphify | A /graphify skill that turns a codebase and its docs into a queryable knowledge graph | 136.7k | Apache-2.0 and MIT |
| hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code | A hand-picked list of skills, agents, status lines, tools and plugins | 56.6k | See repository |
| remotion-dev/claude-code-plugin and remotion-dev/skills | Remotion's official plugin and agent skills for making videos in code | 4 and 4.2k | See repository |
Star counts are a measure of attention, not of fit, and they move daily. A setup with 300 skills is a lot of context to load into every session; a single well-written skill that matches how your team works is often worth more.
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Superpowers: a working method in skills
Superpowers, published by the obra account, is the most-starred of the group and the most opinionated. Its skills change how the agent behaves before it writes code: brainstorming asks questions and plays back what it understood, writing-plans breaks work into tasks of two to five minutes with file paths and checks, test-driven-development enforces red, green, refactor, and subagent-driven-development adds a two-stage review. It installs from the official marketplace with /plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official.
If long sessions drift, this is the first thing to try. It fits with the habits in running long Claude Code sessions without babysitting: plan first, small steps, tests as the checkpoint.
ECC (Everything Claude Code): the big collection
ECC calls itself an agent harness performance optimization system, and it is large: 71 agents, 311 skills, 97 legacy command shims, hooks and memory, always-loaded rules by language, and a security scanner it calls AgentShield. It also targets Codex, OpenCode and Cursor. Treat it as a library to take from rather than a single install. Read the hooks before enabling them, because a hook runs shell commands on your machine at every matching event.
Graphify and Remotion: two skills that do one job well
Graphify parses code locally with tree-sitter and sends docs, papers and images through the model to extract concepts, then builds a graph the agent can query instead of grepping raw files. The point is fewer tokens spent re-reading a large codebase. Install the Python package (uv tool install graphifyy, two y's) and run graphify install to register the skill.
Remotion is a framework for making videos with React, and its team maintains a Claude Code plugin with its agent skills. Add the marketplace with claude plugin marketplace add remotion-dev/claude-code-plugin, install with claude plugin install remotion@remotion, restart, then call /remotion:remotion-create with a prompt.
How to install plugins safely
- Start from the official marketplace.
/plugin, then Discover, lists what Anthropic curates;/plugin install name@claude-plugins-officialinstalls one. - Read before you add a third-party marketplace. Anthropic's own README says to trust a plugin before installing it, because it cannot verify what MCP servers or files a plugin includes.
- Check the hooks and MCP servers. Skills are text. Hooks and MCP servers run code and reach the network. Open
hooks/hooks.jsonand.mcp.jsonin the repo first. - Keep your permission rules. A plugin does not need you to switch prompts off. Deny rules still apply to whatever it asks Claude to do.
- Install less. Every skill description is context the agent carries. Add one, use it for a week, then add the next.
If you are still choosing an agent, the extension story is one of the bigger differences in Claude Code vs Codex vs Antigravity.
How PeakWatch fits
Plugins make sessions longer and more autonomous, which makes the moments they stop to ask more important. PeakWatch puts those asks on a Wear OS watch, including Galaxy Watch, with the tool and its arguments in view and one tap to approve or deny, through a relay you run on your own machine. It is in private beta.
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Questions
What is the difference between a Claude Code skill and a plugin?
What is Everything Claude Code?
How do I install a Claude Code plugin?
Are Claude Code plugins safe?
How do I make videos with Claude Code?
Sources
- Anthropic. Claude Code: extend Claude with skills. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/skills
- Anthropic. Claude Code: automate actions with hooks. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/hooks-guide
- Anthropic. Claude Code: connect Claude Code to tools via MCP. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/mcp
- Anthropic. Claude Code: plugin manifest reference. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins-reference
- Anthropic. claude-plugins-official, GitHub. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official
- Superpowers, GitHub (obra/superpowers). https://github.com/obra/superpowers
- ECC, GitHub (affaan-m/ECC). https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC
- Graphify Labs. graphify, GitHub. https://github.com/Graphify-Labs/graphify
- awesome-claude-code, GitHub (hesreallyhim). https://github.com/hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code
- Remotion. Claude Code plugin. https://remotion.dev/docs/ai/claude-code-plugin
- Remotion. Repositories on GitHub (remotion-dev). https://github.com/orgs/remotion-dev/repositories
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