Publish Plugins

SkillFiles & storage

(project) Use when editing any file under skills/ or plugins/ to bump the plugin version and check the manifests

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Publish Plugins skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by vinta/hal-9000 in .claude/skills/publish-plugins/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Prepare the repo's plugins for release: work out which ones changed, bump their versions, and check the manifests still describe what is on disk.

Each plugin owns its version in its own .claude-plugin/plugin.json, and the repo-root .claude-plugin/marketplace.json carries no version fields:

PluginManifest
hal-skillsskills/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
hal-output-stylesplugins/hal-output-styles/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
hal-session-auto-renameplugins/hal-session-auto-rename/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
hal-voiceplugins/hal-voice/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

1. Find the changed plugins

git diff --name-only origin/main...

skills/** belongs to hal-skills, plugins/<name>/** to that plugin. Only the plugins with changes are candidates for a bump.

2. Check what is already bumped

For each candidate, compare the working-tree version against origin/main:

git show origin/main:skills/.claude-plugin/plugin.json

If a plugin's version already differs from origin/main, it was bumped for unreleased work. Do not bump it again. Only bump a plugin whose version still matches origin/main. Check each candidate independently — a change under skills/ says nothing about whether hal-voice needs a bump.

3. Bump

  • Patch (0.2.0 -> 0.2.1): bug fixes, config changes, style cleanup
  • Minor (0.2.0 -> 0.3.0): new features, new hooks, new commands
  • Major (0.2.0 -> 1.0.0): breaking changes to hook behavior or config format

4. Check the manifests are in sync

python3 .claude/skills/publish-plugins/scripts/check_manifest_sync.py

Every plugin is described twice on purpose: once in its own .claude-plugin/plugin.json and once as an entry in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json. For each plugin the script checks that

  • both describe the same fields with the same values, apart from version (plugin.json only) and source, category, tags, strict, defaultEnabled (marketplace entry only — Claude Code ignores them in a plugin.json)
  • every component path either manifest declares exists on disk
  • every skill directory in a plugin's root appears in both skill lists

It exits non-zero naming each problem. Fix the manifests it names, then run it again.

5. Validate

claude plugin validate .
claude plugin validate ./skills
claude plugin validate ./plugins/hal-output-styles
claude plugin validate ./plugins/hal-session-auto-rename
claude plugin validate ./plugins/hal-voice

The first call validates the marketplace manifest; the rest validate each plugin manifest.

6. Check the skills still group for other agents

npx -y skills@latest add . -l

This lists what npx skills add vinta/hal-9000 will offer, reading the working tree instead of the published repo, and installs nothing. Every skill has to appear under the Hal Skills heading with a count matching the skills list. A skill listed without that heading means the hal-skills marketplace entry lost its name or its skills array — that CLI reads only the two manifests at the repo root, so it never sees skills/.claude-plugin/plugin.json.

Signals

GitHub stars
130
Forks
25
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
publish-plugins
Source
github.com/vinta/hal-9000