Claude Code mods examples: the best ones to try first

The best Claude Code mods to try first are Anthropic's three samples (token-weather, blast-radius and replay-theater), the mods already built into Claude Code, and a handful of community mods like cctop, secret-redactor and launch-codes. If none of those fit how you work, describe the mod you want in a normal session and Claude will write it.

If you're new to the feature, start with our explainer on what Claude Code mods are and how to install them. This post covers what people have actually built in the week since launch.

What people on X are building

The day after launch, Claude Code team member @lydiahallie asked: "have you built any claude code mods yet? :)" It drew 286 replies.

For ideas, the most useful post came from @JJEnglert. He quoted Boris Cherny's launch post and listed 10 kinds of mods worth building. His list is further down, because it's more a menu of mod types than a set of downloads.

@daniel_mac8 wrote that "Claude Mods are a big deal." He said mods had been in early preview for a couple of weeks, and during that time he built a claude-mod-builder skill, which he shared for free. So within days of launch, people were already making tools that help Claude write mods.

Anthropic's own examples

Anthropic keeps three sample mods in the claude-code/mods folder of its claude-code-playground repository on GitHub. All three need Claude Code 2.1.287 or later.

token-weather draws a live forecast of your context window above the prompt, so you can see a session filling up before it starts to drag.

blast-radius holds a risky shell command (rm -rf, git reset --hard, a force push, a migration) and shows what it would change. Nothing runs until you click Proceed or Cancel.

replay-theater adds a /replay command that steps through the file edits Claude made in the last turn, one diff at a time.

To try one for a single session, clone the repo, go into claude-code/mods, and run claude --plugin-dir ./token-weather. Swap in ./blast-radius or ./replay-theater for the others.

Some of Claude Code's own features are mods too, including the /diff pane and AGENTS.md support. There's also an optional built-in called cc-plugin-you-should-know, which is off by default. During longer tasks it runs a side agent and leaves a note above the prompt when it notices something you might miss. Turn it on with /plugin enable cc-plugin-you-should-know@builtin.

Community mods worth a look

An independent catalogue on GitHub, karanb192/awesome-claude-code-mods, had scanned 2,959 public mods by today. For each one, it records what Claude's validator says the mod can read, write, run or send over the network. It calls itself "an independent scan, not an official Anthropic directory."

Three from that list stand out. cctop is a dashboard pane for context fill, tokens, cost and rate limits. secret-redactor replaces secrets, emails and IP addresses with placeholders before the model reads them. launch-codes makes you enter a one-time code and confirm before risky Bash commands like git push --force.

The same catalogue is a good reminder to read the details. nibbl is a pixel pet, and it also sends event types and timestamps to its own server. intermission downloads and runs a Doom port, then connects to a shared game server. I'm not calling either one malicious. They just do more than their descriptions suggest at a glance, so run claude plugin validate on any mod before you install it.

10 mod ideas to build yourself

JJ Englert's list is worth borrowing, because the mods that pay off tend to be the ones built around your own habits:

• A side panel for dashboards, to-do lists or live test results
• A thin bar above the prompt for the current goal or a checklist
• A status line with cost, git branch or how long the task has run
• Pop-up notices when a build finishes
• Guardrails that block or review risky tool calls
• Prompt rewrites that expand your shorthand or add standing instructions
• Custom slash commands for session summaries or client context
• Custom tools or reviewer agents Claude can call
• Scheduled background checks, such as watching CI
• Transcript cleanup that strips secrets or customer names before logging

My read

The playful mods get the attention, but I'd install the dull safety ones first: blast-radius, launch-codes and secret-redactor. Each puts a pause between the agent and something you can't take back. Dashboards like cctop come second. When I can see what a session is doing, I'm more willing to hand it bigger jobs.

What this means for a small business

If anyone on your team, or a contractor, runs Claude Code on a machine that touches client data, a mod like secret-redactor or a homemade approval guard costs almost nothing to add. Mods also let you put a human checkpoint exactly where your process needs one, and finding those spots is usually the hard part of handing real work to AI. If you'd like help mapping them out, New Face Design offers a free process audit for Fox Valley businesses.