Plugins & Marketplaces

Plugins extend AI agents with bundled tools, skills, rules, hooks, and MCP servers. Marketplaces provide registries or collections where plugins can be discovered and installed.

aix provides first-class configuration for plugins and marketplaces via ai.json, configuring native plugin registries where supported and automatically converting and unpacking plugin components for editors without native plugin systems.

Configuration

Add plugins and marketplaces to ai.json:

{
   "plugins": {
      "skill-creator@claude-plugins-official": true,
      "custom-tools": {
         "source": "./plugins/custom-tools",
         "enabled": true
      }
   },
   "marketplaces": {
      "claude-plugins-official": "https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official",
      "team-marketplace": {
         "source": "https://github.com/my-org/marketplace",
         "type": "git"
      }
   }
}

CLI Commands

# Add a marketplace
aix add marketplace https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official --name claude-plugins-official

# Add a plugin from a marketplace or local path
aix add plugin skill-creator@claude-plugins-official
aix add plugin ./plugins/custom-tools --name custom-tools

# List configured plugins and marketplaces
aix list plugins
aix list marketplaces

# Remove a plugin or marketplace
aix remove plugin skill-creator@claude-plugins-official
aix remove marketplace claude-plugins-official

Native Support vs Compatibility Unpacking

Different editors have different levels of support for plugins and marketplaces:

Native Plugin Editors (claude-code, opencode, copilot, cursor):
- Claude Code: Writes enabled plugins to enabledPlugins and marketplaces to extraKnownMarketplaces in .claude/settings.json (project) or ~/.claude/settings.json (user).
- OpenCode: Writes plugin references or paths to the plugins array in opencode.json (project) or ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json (user).
- Copilot: Writes .github/copilot-plugins.json and .github/copilot-marketplaces.json (project) or ~/.config/github-copilot/ (user).
- Cursor: Writes .cursor-plugin/plugin.json and .cursor-plugin/marketplaces.json at project scope. (Cursor has no user-scope plugin configuration).
Compatibility Unpacking for Non-Native Editors (codex, windsurf, zed, antigravity, grok):
- Editors without a native plugin engine cannot load Claude/OpenCode plugin bundles directly.
- For local or resolved plugin directories, aix automatically discovers bundled components:
  - Skills: Discovered from <pluginDir>/skills/*/SKILL.md or <pluginDir>/SKILL.md.
  - Rules: Discovered from <pluginDir>/rules/*.md or *.mdc.
  - MCP Servers: Discovered from <pluginDir>/.mcp.json or <pluginDir>/mcp.json.
- These components are unpacked and installed directly into the target editor’s native directories (e.g. .agents/skills/, .windsurf/rules/, etc.).

What Happens When a Skill, Rule, or Hook Collides with a Plugin?

If your ai.json defines a skill, rule, MCP server, or hook that is also provided by an active plugin, behavior is governed by strict precedence and namespacing:

1. In Editors with Native Plugin Support

Skills: Native editors like Claude Code resolve local project-level skills first. When a local skill in .claude/skills/<name> shares a name with a skill bundled inside an enabled plugin, the local project skill takes precedence.
Hooks: Both user-defined hooks and plugin hooks execute. In Claude Code, hooks registered in .claude/settings.json and hooks provided by active plugins both trigger on matching lifecycle events, running sequentially.
MCP Servers: Servers explicitly declared in mcp (.mcp.json) run alongside any servers spun up by enabled plugins.

2. In Non-Native Editors via Compatibility Unpacking

When aix unpacks a plugin for non-native editors, it employs two layers of conflict protection:

Automatic Namespace Prefixing:
- Every unpacked component is automatically namespaced using the plugin’s name: ${pluginName}-${componentName}.
- For example, if plugin skill-creator contains a skill named eval-viewer and a rule guidelines.md, aix unpacks them as skill-creator-eval-viewer and skill-creator-guidelines.
- Because user-defined skills and rules in ai.json are authored without the plugin prefix (e.g. eval-viewer), their keys do not collide.
Explicit User Config Always Overrides (...unpacked, ...userConfig):
- If a collision occurs (for instance, if you explicitly define a skill or rule named skill-creator-eval-viewer in your ai.json), aix merges unpacked components underneath your configuration:
```
skills: { ...unpacked.skills, ...config.skills },
mcp: { ...unpacked.mcp, ...config.mcp },
rules: { ...unpacked.rules, ...config.rules },
```
- Your explicit ai.json definitions always override plugin-provided components.