/plugin directory opens Discover, and marketplace commands treat the built-in directory separately
/plugin directory now opens Discover scoped to the Anthropic plugin directory, and marketplace list escapes odd values and hides built-in entries from --json
What probably matters to youSection of the release
Unclear What the separate handling for the anthropic-plugin-directory entry is meant to do is unclear, because it is inactive in this build.
What
/plugin is the command for managing plugins, the add-ons that extend Claude Code. Plugins come from marketplaces, which are catalogs of plugins. This release changes how the built-in Anthropic plugin directory, anthropic-plugin-directory, is shown and handled.
/plugin directory: now opens the Discover view (discover-plugins) limited to the anthropic-plugin-directory marketplace, with your search text passed in as searchQuery. It used to open a separate directory-search screen. That screen and its tab have been removed.
Marketplace lookup: looking up a marketplace can now report that marketplace as not found under some condition.
plugin marketplace list: the repository, ref, URL and path shown in the text output now go through new sanitizers. Plain values are shown as they are, and anything unusual is shortened to its beginning and end. Before, raw values were printed.
plugin marketplace list --json: marketplaces whose source is pluginDirectory are left out, and the list is sorted by name. The anthropic-plugin-directory entry has its own handling.
marketplace remove: removing a built-in plugin-directory result is no longer logged as a removed marketplace, and the error message it shows is shortened.
Why
Browsing the Anthropic plugin directory now happens in the same Discover screen as other plugin browsing. Escaping marketplace details protects your terminal from odd or hostile values in a marketplace's metadata. If you have scripts that read --json output, note that built-in directory entries no longer appear there.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Added sinceA small documentation edit on Week 21 · May 18–22, 2026 touched a line naming --json after this was published.<div>`claude agents --json` lists live sessions as JSON for scripting, such as status bars and session pickers</div>whats-new/2026-w21see the edit
Confirmed sinceAnthropic's documentation has since written up --json, on Error reference.| `Error: --json-schema is not a valid JSON Schema` | [Command-line errors](#the-json-schema-value-is-not-a-valid-json-schema) |errorssee the edit
How sure we are
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubtWhat the separate handling for the `anthropic-plugin-directory` entry is meant to do is unclear, because it is inactive in this build.
Anthropic's documentation agreesAnthropic's documentation has since written up --json, on Error reference.
Anthropic's release notes agreeChanged claude plugin uninstall --json and the /plugin dialog to say a plugin's data was kept when its folder stays because another…
