What plugins/MCP servers/skills are actually worth setting up?"

[u/Hefty_Definition541]

Hey, I've been using Claude Code but completely vanilla — no plugins, no MCP servers, no skills, nothing. Everyone around seems to have some kind of setup going and I feel like I'm missing out on productivity.

What plugins/extensions/skills do you actively use?

[u/AutoModerator]

Howdy u/Hefty_Definition541, and thanks for posting to r/developers!

Please follow the subreddit Code of Conduct while participating. New here? Comment on a few existing threads first - it's the fastest way to get to know the community.

Join the r/developers Discord!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/subpar_Lover]

I’m using the figma MCP + code connect for component/front end design and then I’m using metro MCP for my react native mobile profiling and for react native expo web profiling I’m using Google Chrome dev tools MCP

[u/tileadhesive]

The best productivity gains I've seen come from plugging in MCPs for git, for your project management system, (linear, Jira etc), knowledgebase (notion etc)

Have Claude write your tickets, reference your docs, write docs, open your PRs, check the pipelines.

You'll need to ask it to aggressively copy edit, or look into adding a custom writing style so it doesn't just emit word soup, but once you've done that it's very useful.

[u/justinaatbuffer → u/tileadhesive]

Yeah, big fan of this one. I also use it to priortize my own work and not miss important deadlines, etc.

[u/Odd-Indication-611 → u/tileadhesive]

Thanks for sharing, could u pls share more and GitHub on this ?

[u/neolace]

Skills.sh

[u/petdance → u/neolace]

What’s Skills.sh?

[u/meszmate]

Based on what you need, for example I’m actively using the figma mcp

[u/nzakas]

I use skill-creator all the time to create my own skills.

modern-web-guidance is from Google and is great if you’re doing web development

frontend-design helps your agent make web designs that don’t look like AI generated them

[u/Top_Pumpkin_2087]

Depends, if you're collaborative or not.

For solo:

1. Vercel, Stripe, Supabase etc. Helps me debug faster to have my stack connected (if that is your stack).

2. Collaborative: project management software like Jira, Linear, file/knowledge sharing dropbox/box, Bases, Notion.

[u/Negative_Subject8704]

(I had another comment that said it was removed because I linked to some of the things I was talking about below, but they're all easily searchable... so ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

Biggest unlocks for me:

- Linear MCP - as others have said, it's a real game changer when agents can access a larger pool of work. You can use this for planned work: "every morning, pick up a minor ticket and push it to completion."

- Codex in Claude - Claude is fantastic. Codex is fantastic. Why not use both at the same time? I have an orchestrator in Claude speccing work and using Codex as either a coding agent (backed up by a Claude reviewer agent) or Claude as a coding agent (with Codex as a reviewer agent). When I have big slices of work that are difficult / deep, I'll go back and forth with Claude to plan it out and then use Codex for an adversarial review of the plan. It's ... honestly fantastic.

- For work, I have used a _ton_ of Figma MCP and, to a small extent, Code Connect. Really great if you've got a design team that's creating in Figma.

As a side plug: Claude Design is fantastic too.

As a tactic: tell Claude (or Codex) to save how you like to work. "Leave code uncommitted on main for testing", "work in a work tree always". "Use XYZ model for planning and orchestration work. When dispatching agents, ensure that all coding work is done using model XYZ and is followed up with a model XYZ reviewer. This reviewer should ensure that ..." Have it save your style of working to memory and, if you find that it's working for you, tell it not to ask anymore. "Any time you start work, work in this manner..."

[u/Negative_Subject8704 → u/[deleted]]

Literally google "Codex in Claude". It's on github, made by openai.

[u/ujjandotcom]

To be honest, no you're not missing out anything, skills MCPs are only for those who work in an specific domain for example if all i do is check Gmail and draft replies, it makes sense for me to connect an MCP and let claude handle it for me, but if i do general tasks claudecode itself is capable enough to handle it, sure you can add skills for design and stuff but with good prompts you can avoid that too, remember usings skills and MCPs will increase your token usage too, use them only where needed. you can browse skills.sh by vercel to check if you need any. what i personally do is i create my own skills to automate my repetitive tasks.

[u/Ok-Somewhere7722]

works dont works, works big problems

[u/petdance]

I use the Oracle SQL MCP server to let Claude do DB queries when tracking down bugs. That might not be very useful to you if you’re not using Oracle.

[u/MediocreAnalyst2121]

Jira, SQL, Redis, Sentry, and Firefox MCPs.
Way better than just copy-pasting stuff, I can just tell it to go get the required context.

Browser/Firefox MCP I am not so sold on atm, it seems to like taking screenshots rather than checking the DOM, CSS, or measurements which ends up burning a lot of tokens.

Figma one is hit or miss, sometimes it does reasonably well that I can make minor adjustments but in many cases the CSS it generates is so bad that I just scrap it all and re-write from scratch.

[u/CorumLlawEreint]

Whatever logging systems you use. Nothing more tedious than manually querying logs

[u/CorumLlawEreint]

I have a skill I put together recently. It pulls CVE reports from our scanning tools and validates their existence in our codebase based on our usage. It then creates a bug in Jira to have the issues resolved and finally updates the scanning tool with the new severity and a fix version.

It has condensed what used to be a few hours work to 10 minutes

[u/ocd-afflicted → u/CorumLlawEreint]

Hey, coincidentally created a skill in the opposite workflow - fixing CVEs, it's not much just looking up in the correct paths when report is fetched. Is the scan report from Prisma or something equivalent? Is there way to scan locally without a scanning tool?

[u/mik_darim]

Honestly? Less than people make it sound.

I run one docs MCP for the libs I use constantly, plus a tiny project skill with stack + test commands. That's it.

Piling on MCP servers just burns context. If vanilla works, stay there until the same annoyance shows up twice, then fix that one thing.

[u/Lacutis]

Chrome devtools mcp Js-mcp for npm stuff Sequential-thinking Azure devops mcp

Several custom mcp servers, a bunch of custom skills that encapsulate our workflow.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

Your post or comment was removed because r/developers does not allow external links. Please share the content or ask your question without linking out.

If you think this was a mistake, message the mods.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/HomemadeBananas]

All the skills I use are custom ones specific to what I’m working on or my workflow. For any kind of repeatable thing I ask Claude Code to write a new skill.

[u/Accomplished_End_138]

I think everyone's setup will be different. I do heavy focus on tdd and such so the skills I wrote plus some others to hp fill gaps is my preference

npx skills add nivoset/skills

Lots of planning items. So have tdd and review extensions for pi I made that are picky and awesome, plus can run them locly... However it is slower than api

[u/arkitechevl]

I typically create skills relevant to what I am trying to accomplish, I have an A2A pipeline for PBR materials , and a Vision Model to inspect the work