What
Claude Code ships with a skill for writing plugins made of function hooks. A skill is a packet of instructions that Claude can load when it needs them. A function hook is code that runs inside Claude Code and changes what it shows or does. The skill has a new description and new menu text, and both now talk about "mods". Its menu entry reads "Write a mod: a live pane, view or behaviour change in Claude Code". Its description covers:
- live panes
- bands
- status lines
- toasts, which are short pop-up notices
- hooks, in the terminal or in the desktop app's Code tab, which reload live in the current session
The skill also ships with its own files:
examples/pane.tsxexamples/band.tsxreference.md- generated type declarations
It now sits in a "plugin-authoring" bundle.
Why
Claude reads a skill's description to decide when to load it. A new description therefore changes when Claude reaches for this skill, for example when you ask it to build a pane or a status line.
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubt
What decides whether the "plugin-authoring" bundle is available is not known.