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Distributing

A catalog is a git repository, so distributing one is just publishing a repo. No registry, no packaging step, no account to create: push it somewhere your users can clone, and tome catalog add does the rest — they add your catalog once and use it from every harness they run.

Before you tag​

Two habits protect your users from the common failure modes:

  1. Commit the native manifests. Ship tome-plugin.toml in every plugin directory, not just a legacy .claude-plugin/plugin.json. Tome reads only the native manifest — a legacy-only plugin causes exit 80 (plugin_not_converted) for every user. Run tome plugin convert yourself, once, and commit the result so they never see it.
  2. Lint in CI before tagging. Run tome catalog lint . --strict as a release gate: errors exit 85, warnings under --strict exit 86, clean exits 0. See Linting for the recipe.

Publish it​

  1. Push your catalog repo to a host (for example, GitHub).

  2. Tell people to add it:

    tome catalog add <your/repo>
    tome plugin enable <plugin-name>

That is the entire process — any git repository of plugins becomes a Tome catalog, usable across every harness Tome supports, from Claude Code and Cursor to Zed and Copilot. For what your users see on their side, read Plugins & catalogs.

A note on trust​

Adding a catalog runs its instructions inside the user's agent. Tell your users that adding your catalog means trusting your content — the same trust they give npm install or any script they run. See the Security model for the boundary Tome does and does not defend.

Pitfalls​

  • Exit 80 (plugin_not_converted) — a plugin in your repo contains only the legacy plugin.json. Convert and commit before publishing (above).
  • Exit 5 (manifest_invalid) — tome-catalog.toml is parsed strictly; an unknown or misspelled field rejects the whole catalog at add time.
  • Exits 85/86 — these are lint verdicts, not crashes: your CI gate working as intended. See Linting and Exit codes.

Next steps​

  • Tighten the release gate: Linting.
  • Migrating an existing marketplace into the repo you're about to publish: Converting.