Plugin Manifest

ValidatorPluginOfficial docsPlugin manifest schema

The plugin.json file lives in the .claude-plugin/ directory and declares the plugin's components.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
name	string	yes	Plugin name
version	string	no	Semantic version
description	string	no	Plugin description
author	object	no	Author info (must be an object, not a string)
homepage	string	no	Homepage URL
repository	string	no	Repository URL
license	string	no	License identifier
keywords	string[]	no	Search keywords
commands	string | string[]	no	Path(s) to command directories
agents	string | string[]	no	Path(s) to agent directories
skills	string | string[]	no	Path(s) to skill directories
hooks	string | string[] | object	no	Additional hooks config paths or inline config (see Auto-discovery)
mcpServers	string | string[] | object	no	Additional MCP config paths or inline config (see Auto-discovery)
outputStyles	string | string[]	no	Path(s) to output style files
lspServers	string | string[] | object	no	Additional LSP config paths or inline config (see Auto-discovery)

Author

The author field must be an object (string format is not supported):

Field	Type	Required	Description
name	string	yes	Author name
email	string	no	Contact email
url	string	no	Author URL

Auto-discovery

Claude Code automatically loads components from default locations in the plugin root. The hooks, mcpServers, and lspServers fields in plugin.json are for additional files beyond these defaults:

• Hooks — hooks/hooks.json (loaded automatically)
• MCP — .mcp.json (loaded automatically)
• LSP — .lsp.json (loaded automatically)

Specifying the default location in plugin.json (e.g., "hooks": "./hooks/hooks.json") causes a duplicate error. Only use these fields to reference files at non-default paths.

Example

{
  "name": "my-plugin",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "A Claude Code plugin for automated testing",
  "author": {
    "name": "Dev Team",
    "email": "dev@example.com"
  },
  "skills": "./skills/",
  "hooks": "./config/extra-hooks.json",
  "mcpServers": "./config/extra-mcp.json"
}