The answer page
What is a Claude Code plugin?
A Claude Code plugin is a packaged bundle that installs one or more components into Claude Code at once: skills, agents, slash commands, hooks, or MCP servers. Add a marketplace, install the plugin by name, and everything it carries is available in your session. Availability is not use, though. The agent still decides case by case whether to load a skill, and that judgment decays across a long session and resets after compaction. What closes that gap is a router plus a hook: a FLOW.md that maps intent to the skill that should handle it, and a hook that re-asserts the routing every prompt so it cannot decay. A plugin that ships both is what Flowy calls a Flow. Say “ship the password reset” and it fires brainstorming, planning, test-driven development, and verification in order. Say “what’s in this folder” and it correctly fires nothing. Flowy is the free, open-source library of these plugins, each hand-checked before it enters the catalog. Install is four commands inside Claude Code.
Flowy calls that routed kind a Flow. What a Flow is, and what is inside one.
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What is the difference between a plugin and a skill?
A skill is a single SKILL.md instruction file that teaches an agent one capability, like brainstorming, test-driven development, or systematic debugging. A plugin is the package that delivers skills and other components together, so one install gets you a whole set instead of copying files one at a time.
That is a packaging win, not a behaviour win. Skills are powerful in isolation and the problem is routing: an agent treats them as optional suggestions and decides on its own whether to use them. You have to know the right skill name, invoke it yourself, and do it in the right order for your task. Most of the time, agents skip skills entirely and improvise. A pile of skills in your .claude/skills/ folder is not a workflow. It is a cabinet of ingredients with no recipe, and a plugin that installs the whole cabinet at once does not change that.
Why doesn’t installing a plugin make its skills run?
Because installing puts a skill within reach, and nothing more. Whether it loads on a given prompt stays a judgment call the agent makes each time, and that judgment weakens as a session gets longer and resets after compaction. That is the gap a router closes.
The FLOW.md file is a decision tree. It reads the context behind every prompt and maps it to a skill routing branch: new feature, bug, plain question, and so on. Each branch lists which skills to invoke, in which order. An enforcement hook installed by the Flow makes those calls mandatory, not advisory. The agent cannot skip to a later step. The critical judgment case is “invokes nothing”: when the context is a plain question, the FLOW.md correctly fires no skill and answers directly. That discipline is the trust signal. Without the enforcement hook, the FLOW.md is documentation. With it, routing is law.
How do I install a Claude Code plugin?
four lines in Claude Code. After that, prompt in plain English.
> /plugin marketplace add flowy-sh/flowy-core> /plugin install flowy-core> /plugin install flowy-superpowers> /flowy-superpowers:activate
# now prompt normally. the Flow routes from here
What makes a plugin fire on the right prompt?
Loose skills
- Suggestions. The agent picks whether to use them.
- You choose which skill to invoke and when.
- Scattered files. No tested combination.
A Flow
- Enforced routing. The hook fires the right skill at the right step.
- The Flow picks. You just prompt.
- Hand-checked bundle, tested to work together.
See the full comparison on the compare page →
See it work in a real Flow.
Browse the library or read the superpowers-flow source directly. Free. Open source.
FAQ
What is a Claude Code plugin?
A Claude Code plugin is a packaged bundle that installs one or more components into Claude Code at once: skills, agents, slash commands, hooks, or MCP servers. You add a marketplace, then install the plugin by name, and every component it carries becomes available in your session.
What is the difference between a plugin and a skill?
A skill is a single SKILL.md instruction file that teaches the agent one capability. A plugin is the package that delivers skills and other components together. One plugin can carry many skills, so installing a plugin is how you get a whole set in one step instead of file by file.
Do the skills in a plugin run automatically?
Not by default. Installing a plugin makes its skills available, but the agent still decides case by case whether to load one, and that judgment decays across a long session and resets after context compaction. Availability and use are two different things.
What makes a plugin fire on the right prompt?
A router plus a hook. The router is a FLOW.md that maps intent to the skill that should handle it, and the hook re-asserts that routing on each prompt and after compaction so it does not decay. Anthropic’s own Claude Code docs recommend hooks and re-invoking after compaction for this reason. A plugin that ships both is what Flowy calls a Flow.
How do I install a Claude Code plugin?
Add the marketplace, install the plugin, then install and activate any overlay it needs. On Flowy that is four commands inside Claude Code, and the exact sequence is on every listing page.