Choosing a Han Plugin

July 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

Audience: anyone about to install Han. Time to read: about two minutes. Outcome: install the right plugin on the first try, and know exactly what you got.

See also: Plugin landing page · Concepts · Quickstart

Short answer. Install the bundled suite with /plugin install han@han. That gives you everything the meta-plugin bundles: the research, analysis, and documentation skills, every agent, the planning skills (specifying, planning, sequencing, breaking down, and stress-testing work before implementation), the coding skills (writing, reviewing, analyzing, testing, investigating, and standardizing code), the GitHub skills, and the reporting skills.

Pick han-core instead only when you know you do not want the planning, coding, GitHub, or reporting skills. There is no planning-only, coding-only, GitHub-only, or reporting-only option, because those plugins depend on the core plugin and bring it along.

Some plugins sit outside the bundle. Install han-feedback separately if you want to send feedback. Install han-atlassian separately if you want to publish documentation or feature plans to Confluence, or work items to Jira. Install han-linear separately if you want to publish work items to Linear. Install han-plugin-builder separately if you want the guidance for building your own skills, agents, and plugins.

The rest of this page explains the plugins, the one dependency that surprises people, and how to pick.

The plugins

Han ships as a family of plugins in one marketplace. han-core, han-planning, han-coding, han-github, han-reporting, han-feedback, han-atlassian, han-linear, and han-plugin-builder carry components; han is a convenience wrapper that bundles han-core, han-planning, han-coding, han-github, and han-reporting.

  • han-core. The heart of the suite. It carries the research, analysis, and documentation skills, plus every agent the skills dispatch. If you install only this, you have the full set of specialists, but not the planning or coding skills. The planning skills (/plan-a-feature, /plan-implementation, /plan-a-phased-build, /plan-work-items, /iterative-plan-review) ship in han-planning, and the coding skills (/code-review, /architectural-analysis, /investigate, /test-planning, /coding-standard) ship in han-coding. See the Skills Index for the complete list.
  • han-planning. The planning layer: the skills you reach for before implementation. It adds plan-a-feature, which builds a feature specification from scratch through an evidence-based interview; plan-implementation, which turns a specification into an implementation plan through a project-manager-led team conversation; plan-a-phased-build, which splits a body of context into a sequence of independently demoable vertical-slice phases; plan-work-items, which breaks a trusted plan into independently-grabbable, atomic work items; and iterative-plan-review, which stress-tests an existing plan through codebase-grounded review passes. This plugin depends on han-core and is bundled by the han meta-plugin, so the bundled suite includes it; a core-only install does not.
  • han-coding. The coding layer: the skills you reach for while working in code. It adds tdd, which drives a feature or behavior through a BDD-framed red-green-refactor loop and writes the tests and production code into your tree; refactor, which restructures existing code without changing its behavior through a test-gated refactoring loop; code-review, which runs a comprehensive review of the current branch or specified files; architectural-analysis, which assesses a module's coupling, data flow, concurrency, risk, and SOLID alignment; test-planning, which produces a prioritized test plan; investigate, which runs an evidence-based root-cause investigation with adversarial validation of the fix; and coding-standard, which creates and updates coding standards. This plugin depends on han-core and is bundled by the han meta-plugin, so the bundled suite includes it; a core-only install does not.
  • han-github. The GitHub layer. It adds the skills that talk to GitHub through the gh CLI: post-code-review-to-pr, which posts a code review as comments on a pull request; update-pr-description, which writes a PR description from the branch's changes; and work-items-to-issues, which publishes a work-items file as GitHub issues. This plugin depends on han-core.
  • han-reporting. The reporting layer. It adds stakeholder-summary, which turns a feature specification into a plain-language stakeholder summary (also called an executive or business summary) with diagrams, for sharing with non-technical stakeholders before implementation kicks off; and html-summary, which converts that summary into a single self-contained HTML executive report. This plugin depends on han-core.
  • han-feedback. The feedback layer. It adds han-feedback, which captures structured post-session feedback on the Han skills you ran and optionally posts it as a GitHub issue to testdouble/han. This plugin depends on han-core, but it is opt-in: the han meta-plugin does not pull it in, so you install it on its own.
  • han-atlassian. The Atlassian layer. It adds markdown-to-confluence, which publishes a local Markdown file to a Confluence location you specify; project-documentation-to-confluence, which runs the core documentation skill and then publishes the result there; investigate-to-confluence, which runs the core investigate skill and then publishes the resulting investigation report there as a single page; code-overview-to-confluence, which runs the core code-overview skill and then publishes the resulting overview there as a single page; plan-a-feature-to-confluence, which runs the plan-a-feature planning skill and then publishes the spec and its companion artifacts there as a page tree; and work-items-to-jira, which creates one Jira ticket per slice from a work-items file. All work through the Atlassian MCP server. This plugin depends on han-core, han-planning, and han-coding, because its wrapper skills run the core documentation skill, the plan-a-feature planning skill, and the investigate and code-overview coding skills respectively. It is opt-in: the han meta-plugin does not pull it in, so you install it on its own. It also requires a configured Atlassian MCP server.
  • han-linear. The Linear layer. It adds work-items-to-linear, which creates one Linear issue per slice from a work-items file in a single target team, resolving the team's real states, labels, Projects, and members before creating anything and linking within-file dependencies as native Linear "blocked by" relations. It works through the Linear MCP server. This plugin depends on han-core, but it is opt-in: the han meta-plugin does not pull it in, so you install it on its own. It also requires a configured Linear MCP server.
  • han-plugin-builder. The plugin-building layer. It carries three skills: guidance, the authoring guidance for building Claude Code skills, agents, and plugins, which you can ask directly, or with /guidance init vendor into a repo along with the two builders (renamed with a plugin- prefix so they never collide with this plugin's own commands) plus a path-scoped rule set; skill-builder, which builds a new skill from scratch through an interview and a guidance-conformance review; and agent-builder, which does the same for a new agent. It is for people building plugins rather than shipping product features, so it is opt-in and depends on nothing: the han meta-plugin does not pull it in, and it does not bring han-core along.
  • han. A meta-plugin with no components of its own. It exists to pull in han-core, han-planning, han-coding, han-github, and han-reporting. Installing it is how you ask for the bundled suite in one command. It does not bundle han-feedback, han-atlassian, han-linear, or han-plugin-builder.

The one thing that surprises people

han-planning carries only the planning skills, han-coding only the coding skills, han-github only the GitHub skills, and han-reporting only the reporting skills. So you might expect installing one to give you that slice of Han on its own. None of them work that way.

han-planning, han-coding, han-github, and han-reporting all depend on han-core. When you install a plugin that declares a dependency, Claude Code resolves and installs the dependency for you automatically and tells you what it added. So installing any of them installs han-core alongside it. You end up with the full set of core skills and agents either way.

That means there is no planning-only, coding-only, GitHub-only, or reporting-only install. The real choice comes down to:

  • Core only (han-core): the research, analysis, and documentation skills, plus every agent. No planning, coding, GitHub, or reporting skills, so no /plan-a-feature, /plan-implementation, /tdd, /code-review, /architectural-analysis, /investigate, /test-planning, or /coding-standard.
  • The bundled suite (han): all of the above, plus the planning (/plan-a-feature, /plan-implementation, and the rest), coding (/tdd, /code-review, /investigate, and the rest), GitHub, and reporting skills.

Install han when you want the bundled suite. The han meta-plugin exists for exactly this, to mean "the bundled Han suite" in one command, so it is the clearest way to ask for everything it carries. The difference is also what shows up in your installed plugin list: installing han lists han and pulls its dependencies along.

han-feedback and han-atlassian sit outside that choice. Both are opt-in by design: the meta-plugin deliberately does not bundle them, so neither han nor han-core brings them in. Install han-feedback on its own with /plugin install han-feedback@han when you want to send post-session feedback to the maintainers. Install han-atlassian on its own with /plugin install han-atlassian@han when you want to publish documentation or feature plans to Confluence, or work items to Jira. It also needs a configured Atlassian MCP server. Both pull han-core along the same way the other layers do.

han-linear works the same way: install it on its own with /plugin install han-linear@han when you want to publish work items to Linear. It needs a configured Linear MCP server and pulls han-core along.

Which one do you need?

Find the row that matches you and run the command in it. Start with the recommended option unless you have a reason not to.

Your situationInstallCommand
You want everything, or you are not sure yethan (start here)/plugin install han@han
You want to write code test-first with /tddhan (the bundled suite includes the coding skills)/plugin install han@han
You work with GitHub from Claude Code (review PRs, write PR descriptions, publish work items as issues)han (the bundled suite includes the GitHub skills)/plugin install han@han
You do not need the planning, coding, GitHub, or reporting skills and want a leaner installhan-core/plugin install han-core@han
You installed core only and now want the planning skills (/plan-a-feature, /plan-implementation, /plan-a-phased-build, /plan-work-items, /iterative-plan-review)han-planning (alongside the core you already have)/plugin install han-planning@han
You installed core only and now want the coding skills (/tdd, /code-review, /architectural-analysis, /investigate, /test-planning, /coding-standard)han-coding (alongside the core you already have)/plugin install han-coding@han
You want to send post-session feedback on Han skills to the maintainershan-feedback (alongside whatever you already have)/plugin install han-feedback@han
You want to publish Han documentation or feature plans to Confluence, or work items to Jirahan-atlassian (alongside whatever you already have; needs an Atlassian MCP server)/plugin install han-atlassian@han
You want to publish Han work items to Linearhan-linear (alongside whatever you already have; needs a Linear MCP server)/plugin install han-linear@han
You are building your own skills, agents, or plugins and want the authoring guidancehan-plugin-builder (on its own, or alongside whatever you already have)/plugin install han-plugin-builder@han

The bundled han suite is the right default for almost everyone. Core-only is the deliberate choice for a reader who knows they do not want the planning, coding, GitHub, or reporting skills. For example, they might not work with GitHub from Claude Code and not want coding skills like /tdd and /code-review.

han-feedback is an extra you add on top of either when you want to report back on how the skills are working for you.

han-atlassian is an extra you add when you want documentation or feature plans published to Confluence or work items published to Jira, and it needs an Atlassian MCP server configured.

Installing

First add the marketplace, then install the plugin you picked:

/plugin marketplace add testdouble/han
/plugin install han@han

Swap the second command for han-core@han if you chose core only, or name a layer plugin directly with han-planning@han, han-coding@han, han-github@han, han-reporting@han, han-feedback@han, han-atlassian@han, han-linear@han, or han-plugin-builder@han. They all resolve from the same marketplace.

Adding the marketplace makes the Test Double registry visible to Claude Code so it can resolve the plugin by name; that is why it comes first. When the install finishes, Claude Code lists what it added, including any dependencies it pulled in, so you can confirm you got what you expected.

Starting with core, adding GitHub later

Choosing han-core is not a one-way door. If you start with core only and later decide you want the GitHub skills, install han-github (or han) on top of what you already have. Claude Code adds the GitHub layer to the core you already installed, and you have the full suite. You do not need to uninstall or reinstall anything.