README

Composer Plugin for Managing Claude Code Skills & Commands

About • Installation • How It Works • CLI Commands • Creating Plugins • Available Plugins • Troubleshooting

About

Claude Manager is a Composer plugin that automatically manages Claude Code skills and commands across your PHP projects.

What it does:

Automatically symlinks skills and commands from plugin packages into your project's .claude/ directory
Manages your .gitignore so symlinked plugins are excluded while custom skills remain committed
Provides CLI tools for listing and managing installed plugins
Works seamlessly with Composer's install/update lifecycle

Why use it?

Instead of manually copying skill files between projects, you can install them as Composer packages and let the manager handle the rest. Update a skill package once, run composer update, and all your projects get the improvements.

Installation

The manager is typically installed automatically as a dependency of plugin packages:

composer require --dev leeovery/claude-laravel

If you need to install it directly:

composer require --dev leeovery/claude-manager

That's it. Composer hooks handle everything else.

How It Works

Plugin packages declare type: "claude-plugin" in their composer.json
When Composer installs or updates packages, the manager hooks are triggered
The manager scans for all installed claude-plugin packages
Skills directories are symlinked to .claude/skills/
Command files are symlinked to .claude/commands/
Your .gitignore is automatically updated to exclude symlinked plugins
Claude Code discovers them automatically

After installation, your project structure looks like:

your-project/
├── .claude/
│   ├── skills/
│   │   └── laravel-actions → ../../vendor/leeovery/claude-laravel/skills/laravel-actions
│   └── commands/
│       └── artisan-make.md → ../../vendor/leeovery/claude-laravel/commands/artisan-make.md
├── vendor/
│   └── leeovery/
│       ├── claude-manager/
│       └── claude-laravel/
└── composer.json

CLI Commands

The manager provides a CLI tool for managing plugins:

Command	Description
`vendor/bin/claude-plugins list`	Show all installed skills and commands with their source paths
`vendor/bin/claude-plugins install`	Manually trigger plugin installation (usually not needed)

Creating Plugins

Want to create your own skill or command packages? The easiest way is to use the included scaffolding script.

Quick Start with create-package

Clone this repository and run the create-package script:

git clone https://github.com/leeovery/claude-manager.git
cd claude-manager
./create-package claude-my-skills

This creates a new plugin package in a sibling directory with:

Correct directory structure (skills/, commands/)
Pre-configured composer.json with type: "claude-plugin"
Basic .gitignore and README.md
Anthropic's skill-creator skill installed locally to help you write new skills
Git repository initialized

Then just:

cd ../claude-my-skills
composer install

You're ready to start creating skills with Claude Code's help via the bundled skill-creator.

Manual Setup

If you prefer to set things up manually:

Plugin Requirements

Set type: "claude-plugin" in composer.json
Require leeovery/claude-manager as a dependency
Include a skills/ directory with skill subdirectories, and/or
Include a commands/ directory with .md command files

Example composer.json

{
    "name": "your-vendor/claude-your-skills",
    "description": "Your custom skills for Claude Code",
    "type": "claude-plugin",
    "license": "MIT",
    "require": {
        "php": "^8.2",
        "leeovery/claude-manager": "^1.0"
    }
}

Plugin Structure

your-plugin/
├── skills/
│   ├── skill-one/
│   │   └── skill.md
│   └── skill-two/
│       └── skill.md
├── commands/
│   ├── command-one.md
│   └── command-two.md
└── composer.json

The manager auto-discovers skills/ and commands/ directories—no additional configuration needed.

Available Plugins

Package	Description
claude-laravel	Opinionated Laravel development patterns and practices
claude-technical-workflows	Technical workflow skills for Claude Code

More plugins coming soon!

Automatic Gitignore Management

The manager automatically updates your project's .gitignore to exclude symlinked plugins while preserving any custom skills and commands you create.

What gets added:

# Claude plugins (managed by leeovery/claude-laravel)
/.claude/skills/laravel-actions/
/.claude/commands/artisan-make.md

This ensures:

Symlinked plugins from vendor packages are ignored
Custom/local skills and commands you create can still be committed
The .claude/ directory itself remains in version control

Troubleshooting

Symlinks not created

Run the install command manually:

vendor/bin/claude-plugins install

Skills not showing in Claude Code

Check that .claude/skills/ and .claude/commands/ exist and contain symlinks:

ls -la .claude/skills/
ls -la .claude/commands/

Plugin not detected

Verify the plugin's composer.json has:

"type": "claude-plugin"
leeovery/claude-manager as a dependency
A skills/ or commands/ directory with content

Requirements

PHP ^8.2
Composer ^2.0

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's:

Bug fixes
Documentation improvements
New features
Discussion about approaches

Please open an issue first to discuss significant changes.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

_{Built by Lee Overy}

leeovery / claude-manager

Maintainers

Details