What problem does it solve? Claude Code plugins lack a standard way to store user-configurable, per-project settings and state, forcing developers to hardcode behavior or edit hooks.json and restart. This Skill documents the .claude/plugin-name.local.md pattern so plugins can read structured YAML frontmatter and markdown bodies from hooks, commands, and agents. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Settings File Pattern: Defines the .claude/plugin-name.local.md convention combining YAML frontmatter for structured config with a markdown body for prompts and context. - Bash Parsing Techniques: Provides sed, grep, and awk recipes to extract frontmatter fields, booleans, numbers, lists, and markdown bodies from hooks. - Validation & Utility Scripts: Ships validate-settings.sh and parse-frontmatter.sh to check file structure and extract fields, plus real-world examples from multi-agent-swarm and ralph-wiggum plugins. - Use Case: A plugin author wants users to toggle strict validation mode per project. They document a .claude/my-plugin.local.md template, parse the enabled and mode fields in their hook with the quick-exit pattern, and remind users to restart Claude Code after edits. ## Quick Start Ask the agent to add a configurable settings file to your plugin using the .claude/plugin-name.local.md pattern with YAML frontmatter and hook parsing logic.
