You've learned how to create individual Skills, package them into distributable Plugins, and organize those Plugins with proper metadata and versioning. Each Plugin you've built is self-contained and ready to share. However, as you create more Plugins or work within a team, distributing them one at a time becomes unwieldy. That's where marketplaces come in.

Think of a marketplace like an app store on your phone. Instead of downloading apps from random websites, you go to one place where everything is organized, described, and easy to find. A marketplace is that organized place for your Plugins. It's a single directory that contains multiple Plugins and an index file that lists what's available.

Marketplaces solve practical problems. Teams have a single source for internal tools. Communities can browse and discover Plugins without hunting through documentation. Organizations ensure everyone has access to approved Plugins that follow company standards.

This lesson walks you through creating a marketplace structure, adding Plugins to it, and organizing multiple Plugins for easy discovery.

A marketplace needs two things: a place to store Plugins (the plugins/ folder) and a catalog that lists what's available (the marketplace.json file). Without the catalog file, you just have a folder with Plugins in it. The catalog is what makes it a marketplace.

Here's what it looks like:

The marketplace.json file is required. Think of it like the directory at a shopping mall. The stores (your Plugins) exist in their locations, but the directory tells you what stores are there and where to find them. Without the directory, you'd have to wander around looking at every storefront. With it, you can quickly see what's available.

Each Plugin inside plugins/ maintains the exact structure you learned before. Nothing changes about how you build Plugins. The marketplace just provides a container and an index that makes them discoverable.

Start by creating a directory called my-marketplace. Inside it, create two things:

First, create the .claude-plugin/ directory with a marketplace.json file:

This is your catalog. The name identifies the marketplace. The owner field tells who maintains it (required). The plugins array starts empty — you'll add entries here as you add Plugins. Think of this as creating the directory board at the mall before any stores move in.

Second, create the plugins/ directory. This is where your Plugin packages will live.

Your structure now looks like this:

That's it. You have a marketplace. The marketplace.json file makes it official.

Adding a Plugin means two steps: create the Plugin in the plugins/ folder, then add it to the catalog in marketplace.json.

Step 1: Create the Plugin directory inside plugins/. Make a formatter Plugin at my-marketplace/plugins/formatter/ with its standard structure:

Step 2: Register it in the catalog. Update marketplace.json:

Each Plugin entry needs three things:

• name — What the Plugin is called
• source — Where to find it (the path from the root)

Adding a second Plugin follows the same pattern. Create my-marketplace/plugins/reviewer/ with its Plugin structure, then add an entry to marketplace.json:

Your marketplace now has two Plugins listed in its catalog. Each Plugin stays independent. They don't know about each other. The marketplace just groups them together and makes them discoverable through the marketplace.json index.

Important: If you add a Plugin folder to plugins/ but forget to update marketplace.json, the Plugin won't be discoverable. It's like a store that opened but never got added to the mall directory — it exists, but shoppers won't know about it.

As you add more Plugins, use descriptive names like , , or . This helps users quickly understand what each does. You can also organize the list in your to group related , but the actual folder structure stays flat with all directly inside .

You've learned how to create Plugin marketplaces by setting up a directory with a required .claude-plugin/marketplace.json catalog file and a plugins/ subdirectory. The catalog indexes available Plugins, listing each one's name, location, and description. Plugins maintain their standard structure and remain independent. The marketplace provides organization and discoverability.

In the practice exercises, you'll build your own marketplace and add multiple Plugins from different sources.