In 8,351 Claude Code plugins, the skill's markdown and its script are one maintenance unit, and 78% of their co-changes are functionally coupled
An empirical study of 1,926 repositories hosting Claude Code plugin marketplaces (arXiv 2608.28497, Aug 28) mined 8,351 plugins and 77,773 commits across 2,018 marketplaces. Plugin-touching commit activity grew 8.8x in the six months after the October 2025 launch, 61.3% of plugins target software engineering, feature commits run at 39.6% versus 17.2% in conventional open source, and Claude co-authors 34.9% of all commits. The finding that matters for anyone writing skills: most component types evolve independently, but inside skills directories the natural-language instruction file and the implementation script co-evolve above chance, with 78% of co-changes functionally coupled. Edit one without the other and you have a broken skill that no type checker will catch.
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