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10 Claude Code Plugins to 10X Your Projects

Chase H · Chase H AI · · 20 min read
Commentary by Brian Edwards

The plugin ecosystem is overwhelming—new MCPs, CLIs, frameworks, and skills appear daily, making it nearly impossible to separate genuinely useful tools from noise. Chase H cuts through this chaos by presenting ten tools he actually uses daily, with installation commands, use cases, and honest assessments of which ones deliver real value.

Superbase: CLI Trumps MCP

The first tool highlights a critical insight: when given a choice between an MCP server and a CLI version, always choose the CLI. While the Superbase MCP server works, the Superbase CLI offers superior performance because it runs directly in the terminal rather than requiring additional overhead. Both handle databases and authentication equally well—Superbase even offers a generous free tier—but the installation differs slightly. The CLI approach aligns better with how Claude Code operates: purpose-built for AI coding agents.

Skill Creator from Anthropic

The skill creator represents the most powerful addition to Claude Code's toolkit. It enables users to create, modify, and evaluate existing skills while measuring their performance through A/B testing. Before this tool, developers relied on gut feelings rather than data to determine whether a skill actually improved outputs. The installation is straightforward: search for "skill creator" in the plugins marketplace.

GSD Framework

The Get Stuff Done framework serves as an orchestration layer that fundamentally changes how Claude Code creates projects. It enforces specification-driven development, breaking projects into phased features while managing context windows to prevent degraded output quality from accumulated context. Installation requires a single command from GitHub, and new projects start through the `/gsd` command.

Notebook LM CLI

This tool connects Notebook LM directly to Claude Code's terminal, enabling research, analysis, and content creation without requiring an official API. Users can generate videos, infographics, slide decks, flashcards, podcasts, and more—all through natural language commands. The installation involves copying commands from the Notebook LM-PI GitHub page, followed by logging into the browser-based tool.

Obsidian Integration

Obsidian works exceptionally well as a personal AI assistant context, where accumulated text files and markdown documents benefit from seeing how ideas connect. No CLI or skill installation is required—simply download Obsidian, create a designated vault folder, open Claude Code in that folder, and specify that all markdown files should follow Obsidian conventions.

Versel CLI

Versel simplifies deployment management with a straightforward CLI and free tier. Installation follows the standard pattern: ask Claude Code to install the Versel CLI, then add the corresponding skill from their website for deployment status checks integrated into agent loops.

When given a choice between MCPs and CLIs, always choose the CLI—it's purpose-built for AI coding agents.

Playwright CLI

Playwright enables browser automation capabilities that let Claude Code interact directly with websites. The tool handles complex tasks like filling shopping carts or performing transactions on platforms like Amazon. Installation is straightforward through standard commands.

Critics might note that this approach prioritizes developer productivity over exploring alternative agent architectures—some argue MCPs offer better standardization, even if slower to implement.

Bottom Line

Chase H succeeds at making an overwhelming ecosystem navigable by focusing exclusively on tools he uses daily. The strongest argument runs through the entire piece: CLI tools outperform MCPs for AI coding agents because they're purpose-built for terminal environments. The vulnerability is that some tools mentioned lack full deep dives—readers may want more detail before committing time to installation.

Transcript excerpt on Chase H AI

If you use cloud code, then you know that the plug-in and add-on ecosystem is actually insane right now. Whether it's new MCPs, new CLIs, new skills, new frameworks, there is something new coming out every single day. And it feels like it's impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. What should you actually be using to improve your productivity?

So, in this video, I'm going to do my best to help you out by showing you my top 10 cloud code plugins. And this ranges from skills to CLI tools. And these are things I actually use and I believe they're a true value ad. Now, for all 10 of these tools, I'm going to give you four things.

I'm going to tell you why you should care about this tool, how to use it, how to install it, and an actual use case. So, some of these tools may already be familiar to you, and a couple of them we've already done full deep dive videos on, but my hope is that at least a few of them are brand new. And if you add at least one new tool to your stack, then I think this video is going to be worth your time. So to kick us off, tool number one is the Superbase MCP server.

Now why should you care about the Superbase MCP server? There are two reasons. Number one is databases and number two is authentication. At some point in your building journey, you're going to create a project that requires databases and requires authentication.

Superbase can handle both of those things for us and they have a very generous free tier. So you can actually go pretty far without paying a penny. The other cool thing about Superbase is it's built on open-source tools. Superbase is just a nice wrapper around it that's easy for us to interact with, but we can also self-host and develop locally this entire like authentication and database framework.

Now, to install the Superbase MCP is actually very simple. It is just this one line of code. If you're looking to where I found this, this is inside the cloud code documentation under MCPS. Now, as for use cases, I kind of already alluded to this.

anytime you need a database even if it's a basic one like a just a standard Postgress database or we're ...

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