5 free plugins and skills to take Claude Code up a gear, Quentin IA Marketing

Claude Code ships with everything it needs to write code. What makes the difference is the tooling you plug into it. These five are free, open source, and each one fixes a problem you hit every week: explaining your project again, pasting an Excel file into the chat, hunting for the right skill, knowing what to automate, working with a method.

For each one: what it does, the exact command, and what to know before you install it.

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✅What you need

Claude Code. Check with claude --version (guide checked on version 2.1.309).

Node.js 22.20 or later. Check with node --version: it gives you npx, and the npx skills installer needs at least this version.

Know where to type. /plugin commands go inside a Claude Code session. npx commands go in a regular terminal, from your project folder.

109,000+

GitHub stars for Agent Skills

102,000+

GitHub stars for Claude-mem

installs of Find Skills

Plugin or skill: the difference in two lines

Both install with one command, but they don't work the same way.

🔌

Plugin

It adds commands, agents or hooks to Claude Code. Once installed, it's available in all your sessions.

🧩

Skill

It's a written method Claude loads only when your request calls for it. The rest of the time, it costs nothing.

Type /plugin on its own in Claude Code to open the menu: browse marketplaces, install, enable or remove a plugin.

Claude Code Setup: an audit of your project

🔗 github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official

🔍Start here, it tells you what to install

Install it in Claude Code. /plugin install claude-code-setup@claude-plugins-official. It's an official Anthropic plugin, published on its official marketplace.

Ask for the audit. In the chat: "recommend automations for this project".

Read its recommendations. It scans your codebase and suggests the top 1 or 2 options in each category: MCP servers, skills, hooks, subagents and slash commands.

Read only

It doesn't change a single file. You, or Claude when you ask, install what it recommends.

Don't see the official marketplace in your /plugin menu? Add it with /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official, then run the install again.

Claude-mem: memory across sessions

🔗 github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem

🧠Two ways to install it

In Claude Code. /plugin marketplace add thedotmack/claude-mem, then /plugin install claude-mem.

Or in a terminal. npx claude-mem install.

Restart Claude Code. Context from previous sessions shows up on its own at the start of new ones.

How I use it

I've used it every day since July. The question I ask most: "how did we fix this last time?". Claude finds the answer instead of rediscovering everything.

Two things to know before you install:

🔑

The sign-in it offers

The installer offers a sign-in (email link, no card) for a 30-day free trial of their hosted memory. When the trial ends, memory falls back to your Anthropic plan unless you subscribe.

⏭️

Skip the sign-in

Run CLAUDE_MEM_ONLINE_OPTIN=false npx claude-mem install, or pass the --provider option: the install finishes without an account.

⚠️

The npm trap

npm install -g claude-mem installs the library only, without the hooks or the background service. Use /plugin or npx claude-mem install.

AnyDoc: your documents as Markdown

🔗 github.com/firecrawl/anydoc

📄Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF, readable by Claude

Install the skill. In a terminal: npx skills add firecrawl/anydoc -g, and pick Claude Code when the installer asks which agent. Claude Code can then read your office documents without you pasting them into the chat.

Or convert by hand. npx @firecrawl/anydoc report.docx prints the Markdown, npx @firecrawl/anydoc slides.pptx -o slides.md writes it to a file.

Everything stays on your machine. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and text PDFs convert locally, with no API key.

The one exception

A scanned PDF needs OCR: with --ocr hosted, the whole document goes to Firecrawl Parse to be read. No sign-up needed, a Firecrawl key only raises the limits.

Find Skills: the skill finder

🔗 skills.sh

🔎Describe the need, it finds the skill

Install the skill. In a terminal: npx skills add vercel-labs/skills --skill find-skills -g.

Ask in the chat. "Find me a skill to convert PDFs to Markdown." It searches the public skills.sh directory and offers to install the one that fits.

Or search yourself. npx skills find <keyword> runs the same search from the terminal.

Its own filter

It favors skills with more than 1,000 installs and stays cautious under 100. An installed skill runs third party code inside Claude Code: check the author and the repo before you accept.

Agent Skills: 25 senior engineer methods

🔗 github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills

🛠️From spec to production

Install the plugin in Claude Code. /plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills, then /plugin install agent-skills@addy-agent-skills.

Or as skills, from a terminal. npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills. Add --list to browse before installing, or --skill <name> to take just one.

Follow the cycle. /spec defines what to build, /plan breaks it into small tasks, /build builds slice by slice, /test proves it works, /review reviews before merging, /ship puts it in production.

Who wrote it

Addy Osmani, over 14 years at Google, now at Anthropic working on Claude Code. The pack holds 25 skills: 24 lifecycle steps plus one skill that picks the right method at the right moment.

Three more commands round out the cycle: /constraints sets your quality bar once and for all, /webperf audits web performance, /code-simplify simplifies the code. And since Claude Code already has its own /review command, the plugin's version is /agent-skills:review.

Keep these handy

📋 the 5 commands

☑️After installing

List your active plugins with /plugin.

Skills installed with npx skills go into your current project. With -g, they work in all your projects.

Before installing a skill you found, check its install count, its author and its repo.

The /plugin commands, to type in Claude Code:

/plugin install claude-code-setup@claude-plugins-official
/plugin marketplace add thedotmack/claude-mem
/plugin install claude-mem
/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills
/plugin install agent-skills@addy-agent-skills

The npx commands, to type in a terminal (-g makes them available in all your projects):

npx skills add firecrawl/anydoc -g
npx skills add vercel-labs/skills --skill find-skills -g

What this changes for your business

Every minute spent explaining a project again or copying a table into the chat is a minute less on what brings in money. These five tools remove that friction.

📊

Your client documents

Quotes, Excel exports, decks: Claude reads them directly and works on them.

🧠

Less repetition

Your context, your decisions and your past fixes come back on their own every session.

🚀

Sturdier tools

A spec, test and review method for the internal tools you build.

Key takeaway

Start with Claude Code Setup to see what your project is missing, add Claude-mem so you never explain anything twice, then pick the rest based on your needs.