What is a Plugin
What is a Plugin
A plugin is a directory that Athena loads at startup to extend Claude Code with additional slash commands and MCP server tools. Plugins are referenced in Athena's config or passed via --plugin, and Athena loads them directly — no separate plugin manager is required.
What Plugins Can Do
Skills
The primary capability a plugin provides. Skills are slash commands that the user or agent can invoke during a session. Each skill is defined as a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter inside the plugin's skills/ directory.
Skills marked user-invocable: true in their frontmatter appear as commands the user can type:
/add-e2e-tests <url> <feature>
/analyze-test-codebase [path]
/plan-test-coverage <url> <feature>
MCP Servers
Plugins can expose an MCP server by including a .mcp.json file in the plugin root. Athena merges all plugin MCP configs into a single temporary file and passes it to the spawned Claude process via --mcp-config. The MCP server processes themselves are managed by Claude Code.
Available Plugins
The Athena Workflow Marketplace currently ships two plugins:
e2e-test-builder
An iterative workflow runner for adding Playwright E2E tests to existing codebases.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
/add-e2e-tests <url> <feature> | Full pipeline orchestrator |
/analyze-test-codebase [path] | Detect Playwright config and conventions |
/plan-test-coverage <url> <feature> | Build a prioritized coverage plan |
/explore-website <url> <goal> | Extract selectors and behavior via browser interaction |
/generate-test-cases <url> <journey> | Generate TC-ID based structured specs |
/write-e2e-tests <description> | Implement executable Playwright tests |
site-knowledge
Auto-applied site-specific automation patterns for common websites.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
airbnb | Airbnb automation patterns |
amazon | Amazon automation patterns |
apple-store | Apple Store flow patterns |
apple-testing-guide | Apple testing-specific guidance |
Plugin Distribution
Plugins are distributed through marketplace repositories — GitHub repos containing a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json catalog that Athena uses to resolve plugin directory paths. The primary marketplace is lespaceman/athena-workflow-marketplace. Teams can host their own private marketplace repo with the same structure.
See Loading & Publishing for how to reference plugins in your config.