On September 25, Anthropic announced on its official blog that it has opened a submission portal for the Claude directory, while settling a key positioning question: Plugins are now the primary way to build third-party extensions for Claude. A plugin can bundle MCP connectors, Agent Skills, or both; inside Claude Code, a plugin can also carry LSPs, commands, hooks, and subagents.
The blog post opens with context: millions of people connect Claude to their own apps, work tools, and data every day. What the portal is meant to solve is how third-party developers get their work in front of those users.
Who Can Submit, and What
The portal sits at claude.ai/directory/manage and is open to developers on paid Claude plans. According to reports from outlets including Unite.AI, submitters don't need to be Anthropic partners.
Submissions come in two forms:
- A single MCP connector pointing to a remote MCP server
- A plugin package bundling an MCP server and skills into one GitHub repository, submitted as a whole
Once submitted, the system runs automated validation and security scans immediately. Developers can see scan results, review progress, and reviewer feedback and suggested fixes in a dashboard; once approved, developers decide when to actually publish. Listings go live at claude.ai/directory and can be installed from both Claude.ai and Claude Code.
Skills, connectors, and plugins already in the directory don't need any changes. Per the blog post, skills and MCP connectors remain the underlying building blocks, and the directory will keep listing them as such; developers will eventually be able to upgrade existing connector listings into plugins.
Protocol Layer: MCP 2.0 and Two Extensions
On the technical side, Claude supports the latest MCP specification, which the blog post calls "what's commonly known as MCP 2.0," built around a stateless core. It also names two extensions specifically: MCP Apps, which lets plugins render interactive interfaces inside the chat window; and Enterprise Managed Auth, which handles OAuth authorization for enterprise users automatically so employees don't have to click through authorization pages one by one. For support of additional MCP features and extensions, the blog post only says "coming soon," without listing specifics.
Once listed, there's an analytics dashboard: installs broken down by Claude surface and plugin version, how many times a listing has been viewed, and what search terms users found it through. Developers can use this data to decide which version to fix first and how to rewrite their listing copy.
Two Days, Two Entry Points
This portal and the Marketplace redesign two days earlier are two steps in sequence. On September 23, Claude Marketplace moved from a limited preview to a full directory, grouping plugins, connectors, third-party agent products, and consulting providers onto a single page aimed at paying enterprise customers. The submission portal fills in the supply side: who gets to put things in the directory, and what checks they pass through first.
For China-Based Developers
Over the past year, many China-based teams building SaaS, database, and developer-tool products have already written MCP servers for their own products, many of them sitting on GitHub. Under these new rules, anyone with a paid Claude account can submit an existing MCP server for review directly — the technical bar isn't high.
What trips up teams in mainland China is mainly the account. Under Anthropic's published list of supported regions, mainland China isn't included, so listing requires an overseas entity and an overseas account. How long review typically takes, whether there's a fee or revenue share after listing, and exactly what the security scan checks — none of that is in the blog post, and Anthropic hasn't published detailed review rules.
Sources: Claude official blog, Unite.AI, CocoLoop; the Claude official blog verified the submission process, supported MCP extensions, and analytics dashboard metrics.