Getting a plugin into the Claude directory used to mean feeling your way through a process almost nobody could see from the outside. Since Friday there is a portal for it. It is open to developers on paid Claude plans, walks you from submission to launch, and then shows you how the plugin is being used.
There are two ways in. Either you submit a single MCP connector and point it at your remote MCP server, or you bundle MCP servers and skills, put the whole thing on GitHub and submit the repository. In Claude Code such a bundle can also carry LSPs, commands, hooks and agents.
What the portal actually takes off your hands
Each submission is validated and safety-scanned automatically the moment you send it, so problems surface early rather than weeks later. The portal then shows where your plugin sits in review, what the safety scan turned up and which changes are recommended. Once it is approved, you pick the moment it goes live.
After that come numbers. Usage analytics break installs down by product surface and version, which matters when you are fixing things: a crash in one version looks different from a problem with one surface. On the discovery side you see how often your listing was viewed and which searches brought people to it.
Anthropic also points out that Claude supports the current MCP spec, often called MCP 2.0, with a stateless core. Two extensions are worth a look: MCP Apps puts your own interface inside the chat, and Enterprise Managed Auth handles OAuth for corporate users without a click-through. More are promised.
Existing listings need no changes
Skills and MCP connectors stay as building blocks, and the directory keeps listing them. If you already have a skill, a connector or a plugin there, do nothing. Later you will be able to turn a connector listing into a plugin. Over the coming weeks a single discovery experience also rolls out across Claude and Claude Code.
The portal answers a distribution problem
Plugins have been around for months, and the big ones come from big houses — Amazon brought Seller Central into Claude on Wednesday, Salesforce before that. What was missing was a route for everyone else: submit, get feedback, find out whether anyone uses it. Those are the three things the portal does. The part I find interesting is the search data. A developer who can see which words people type while failing to find their plugin can rewrite the listing — the same loop that has had people polishing app store descriptions for fifteen years. Anthropic is not mentioning a marketplace in passing here, it is shipping the tools one grows out of.
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