Plugin Tools for Claude

Plugins that talk back

Plugins add visual features to Synap — dashboards, trackers, timers, custom views. They live in your sidebar and you interact with them directly.

But some plugins can do something more. They can teach Claude new skills.

How it works

When a plugin includes built-in tools, Claude automatically learns about them the moment you install the plugin. It discovers what the plugin can do and adds those abilities to its own toolkit.

A bookmarks plugin might teach Claude to search through your saved links. A campaign manager might teach Claude to create a new campaign or pull up what's currently running. A habit tracker might let Claude log an entry for you or report on your recent streak.

The plugin handles the action. Claude handles the conversation.

What this looks like in practice

Instead of opening the plugin sidebar and manually browsing through it, you just ask Claude.

• "Show me my bookmarks about marketing."
• "Add this link to my reading list."
• "What campaigns are active right now?"
• "Create a new campaign called Summer Launch."

You're not switching between panels. You're not hunting through menus. You describe what you want in your own words, and Claude does it using the tools your plugin provides.

[SCREENSHOT: Claude using a plugin tool — user asks "search my bookmarks for marketing" and gets a list of matching bookmarks from the plugin]

For plugin creators

If you're building a plugin — or asking Claude Code to build one for you — you can add tools to it at any point. You don't need to plan everything upfront.

Tell Claude Code in plain language: "Add a search tool to my bookmarks plugin so I can ask Claude to find bookmarks by keyword." Claude Code handles the implementation. When the plugin is updated, Claude learns the new skill automatically.

The process works the same whether you're building your first plugin or adding a feature to something you created months ago.

[SCREENSHOT: Claude Code creating MCP tools for a plugin — showing the conversation where the user asks to add search capability]

The technical bit (optional)

Plugins declare their tools in a manifest file. When Synap starts up, it reads these manifests and makes the tools available to Claude. Each tool has a name, a plain-language description, and a definition of what inputs it expects — Claude reads all of this to understand what the tool does and when to use it.

This is part of how Synap turns your mind into something Claude can actively work with, rather than just read.