Claude plugins: how to automate entire job functions with AI

Claude Co-work plugins bundle skills, tools, and connectors into whole job functions. How to install them, customize them, and build your own.

I have spent the last two weeks inside Claude Co-work. Not as an experiment, but as my primary work tool. With Opus 4.6 under the hood, it handles most things without any setup. The real shift came when I discovered plugins. Plugins let you train Co-work to perform entire job roles. Customer service, marketing, sales, product management. All with access to tools and industry knowledge. In this post I go through the difference between Claude Skills and plugins, how to install them, and how to build your own from scratch.

What are Claude Skills?

Skills have been available in Claude for a few months now. They work in the normal chat area and are a recipe: a set of instructions for one specific task. Think invoices, SEO articles, or slide decks. A skill does one thing well, every time.

You find them under Settings > Capabilities in the Claude desktop app. When you type "make a branded invoice for 10,000 kr," Claude recognizes it and activates the relevant skill automatically. The result is consistent and reusable.

But an invoicing clerk does more than invoices. That is where plugins come in.

What plugins are and how they differ

A plugin is a bundle of several skills, tools, and connectors that together make up a whole job function. If a skill is a recipe card for a single dish, a plugin is an experienced cook who knows the whole cookbook, knows which tool to grab when, and works with the rest of the kitchen.

Anthropic launched plugins in research preview on January 30, 2026 and expanded them to enterprise on February 24, 2026. There are 11 official plugins at launch, covering finance, HR, legal, marketing, and customer support. Companies like L'Oreal, Deloitte, Thomson Reuters, and NYSE already use them to automate everything from proxy filings to support tickets.

How to install and use plugins

In the Claude desktop app, plugins live in the left sidebar. Click "Browse plugins" and you see Anthropic's standard plugins: bio research, data, legal, marketing, finance, and more.

Installation is one click. Then press "Manage" to see what is inside: skills, commands, and connectors. The finance plugin bundles six skills (auditing, close management, financial statements, reconciliation, and so on) and connects to Snowflake, Google Cloud BigQuery, Slack, and MS365.

To activate a plugin in Co-work, press the plus button, choose "Plugins," and pick from the list. Each one has specific commands you can run directly.

I tested the marketing plugin by asking it to write a welcome sequence for my AI Recipe Vault. The result: seven emails over 14 days with a clear structure for delivery, value, storytelling, and pitch. The planning alone was more thought through than what most solo founders would produce on their own.

Customize plugins for your business

The standard plugins are a good starting point, but they are generic. Press "Customize" in the plugin manager and you can ask Claude to analyze your business context and suggest improvements.

I linked my Claude project to Co-work (from the normal chat area: select the project and press "Start task in Co-work"), and suddenly the output was tailored to my audience and my brand. You can also add your own skills to an existing plugin. I added my content atomizer skill to the marketing plugin, so it can now take a script, atomize the content, and then use the email skill to write sequences.

Build your own plugins

There are not many third-party marketplaces yet, because the technology is this new. But you can:

Add plugins from GitHub marketplaces (for example "Awesome Claude Plugins")
Import via URL if someone shares their plugins with you
Have Claude build a plugin for you from scratch

I asked Claude to build a "Lead Magnet Launch Kit" plugin for my business. It analyzed my context, asked a few questions, and 10 minutes and a cup of tea later it had built a plugin that takes a topic and an audience as input and produces a complete funnel: concept, landing page copy, welcome sequence, and distribution checklist. I pressed "Save plugin" and it was ready to use right away.

Where to start

Claude plugins move AI from smart chatbot to actual coworker. With 11 official plugins, full customization, and the option to build your own, you can automate whole job functions in your business today. Start with a standard plugin, adapt it to your context, and build from there.

Want more short takes on AI in practice? I post regularly on LinkedIn (link in bio).