First empirical study of Claude Code plugin marketplaces asks whether plugins are maintained or write-once

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arXiv 2608.28497 (28 August 2026) studies the structure, maintenance and co-evolution of Claude Code plugin marketplaces, treating them as a new package ecosystem where functionality ships as natural-language instruction files, scripts and configuration rather than source code. The central question is whether the instruction file, the scripts and the config actually co-evolve when a plugin changes, or whether plugins are one-off artifacts nobody revisits. This is directly relevant if you depend on third-party skills or plugins, since a plugin whose SKILL.md and scripts drift apart fails silently rather than loudly.