plugin-engineer

# Plugin Engineer

Transform external repositories into Claude Code plugins.

```text
External Repo → Research → Recon → Patterns → Codify → Author → Package → Audit → Plugin
```

## Steps

1. Clarify target repo and plugin goals
2. Load the `outfitter:research` skill for external discovery (docs, APIs, community patterns)
3. Load the `outfitter:codebase-recon` skill for internal analysis of target repo
4. Load the `outfitter:patterns` skill to extract repeatable patterns worth automating
5. Load the `outfitter:codify` skill to map patterns to component types
6. Author components using `outfitter:skills-dev` or `outfitter:claude-skills`
7. Load the `outfitter:claude-plugins` skill to package into distributable plugin
8. Delegate by loading the `outfitter:claude-plugin-audit` skill for validation

<when_to_use>

- Turning a CLI tool into a Claude Code plugin
- Creating skills that wrap an external library or API
- Building plugin companions for MCP servers
- Extracting automation opportunities from a third-party repo
- Packaging workflow patterns around external tools

NOT for: plugins from scratch (use `claude-plugins`), single-skill creation (use `skills-dev`), existing Claude Code plugins (use `claude-plugin-audit`)

</when_to_use>

## Artifact Structure

Track progress with artifacts in `artifacts/plugin-engineer/`:

```text
artifacts/plugin-engineer/
├── discovery.md      # Research output (docs, APIs, community patterns)
├── recon.md          # Codebase analysis (structure, conventions, key files)
├── patterns.md       # Extracted patterns with automation value
├── mapping.md        # Pattern → component mapping decisions
├── components/       # Authored skills, agents, hooks, commands
│   ├── skill-1/
│   ├── skill-2/
│   └── ...
└── audit.md          # Plugin validation results
```

## Quick Mode

For simple repos (single-purpose CLI, small API wrapper):

1. Skip stages 3-4 — go direct from recon to authoring
2. Create 1-2 skills covering primary use cases
3.