claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Plugin system has no dependency management — runtime dependencies are undeclared and unverified [1 participants]

1. Failures only surface at runtime, with cryptic OS-level error messages

• Claude Code should verify declared dependencies at install/enable time and warn the user if any are unmet The hookify plugin (from claude-plugins-official) runs scripts via python3. On a machine without Python installed, the plugin fails silently at runtime with a generic OS error — with no mention of Python, no mention of hookify, and no guidance on how to resolve it.

TL;DR

Implement a requires field in plugin manifests to declare runtime dependencies and verify them at install/enable time.

Guidance

• Introduce a requires field in the plugin manifest to specify runtime dependencies, such as Python or Node.js.
• Modify the plugin installation/enable process to check for declared dependencies and warn the user if any are missing.
• Update the plugin marketplace to display documented requirements for each plugin.
• Consider adding a validation step to ensure that plugins correctly declare their dependencies.

Example

{
  "name": "hookify",
  "version": "1.0",
  "requires": ["python3"]
}

Notes

This solution assumes that the plugin system has a centralized manifest or configuration file that can be modified to include dependency declarations.

Recommendation

Apply workaround: Implement the requires field and dependency verification to improve the plugin installation experience and reduce runtime errors.