Claude Code Plugin
Test your plugins without leaving your session.
Plugin-dev spawns isolated Claude sessions that load your plugin, exercise every skill and tool, and report what works. Iterate locally, then smoke test the marketplace install.
Plugins load at startup. You can't hot-reload them.
Every time you change a skill or MCP tool, you need a fresh Claude session to test it. Opening terminals, loading flags, manually trying things -- it breaks your flow.
Plugin-dev automates the loop. It spawns a test session with your plugin loaded via --plugin-dir, discovers the skills and tools, exercises them, and reports structured results. Fix, re-run, iterate.
/plugin-dev:dev
detected: my-plugin v1.0.0
2 skills, 1 MCP server
spawning test session...
exercising skills and tools...
[PASS] create — loaded, exercised
[FAIL] deploy — MCP tool timeout
verdict: FAIL (1 issue)
Two skills. Full coverage.
/plugin-dev:dev
Local iteration loop. Spawns a session with your plugin loaded, auto-discovers skills and MCP tools, exercises them, reports pass/fail per component.
/plugin-dev:test-live
Marketplace smoke test. Cleans state, installs from the registry via the installer, verifies everything loads without bricking. The real install experience.
Iterate
Fix issues, re-run dev. When it passes, run test-live. Green on both means your plugin is ready to ship.
Both skills use taskpilot to spawn isolated sessions. Your main session stays clean while tests run in the background.
How testing works.
Auto-discovery
Reads your plugin.json, scans skills/ directories, and builds a test plan automatically. Or drop a test-plan.md in .claude-plugin/ for custom scenarios.
Isolated sessions
Each test runs in its own tmux session via taskpilot. Your main session is unaffected. Watch live with tmux attach.
Structured reports
Per-skill and per-tool pass/fail results. Error details, duration, and a clear verdict. No guessing what broke.
Stale session cleanup
Re-running dev kills any previous test sessions first. No orphaned tmux sessions or port conflicts piling up.
Install
Requires Claude Code, tmux, and the softwaresoftware-plugins marketplace.
Add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add softwaresoftware-dev/softwaresoftware-plugins
Run in your terminal.
Install the installer
claude plugin install softwaresoftware@softwaresoftware-plugins
Run in your terminal.
Launch Claude Code
claude
Start a new session so the installer is available.
Install plugin-dev + dependencies
/softwaresoftware:install plugin-dev
Run inside Claude Code. Run /reload-plugins when done.
Test a plugin
/plugin-dev:dev
Run inside Claude Code after reloading plugins.