[BUG] "Failed to add marketplace" in Claude Desktop (Cowork) — missing author field in marketplace plugin entry #282
Description
Activity
- added a commit that references this issue
on Apr 1, 2026 Update: The root cause analysis in the original issue was incorrect.
After further investigation, the actual reason this fails is that Cowork's "Add marketplace" feature only supports private or internal GitHub repositories. Public repos like
CodSpeedHQ/codspeedare explicitly blocked by design.From the Cowork plugin management docs:
"Your repository must be private or internal — public repos aren't allowed for organization marketplaces."
This is a Cowork platform limitation, not a bug in this repository. The
authorfield mentioned in the original report is unrelated to this failure.Workarounds:
- Use Claude Code CLI instead:
/plugin marketplace add CodSpeedHQ/codspeed(this works with public repos) - Install the CodSpeed plugin via the official Anthropic marketplace if it's listed there
Closing this issue as it's not actionable on the CodSpeed side. Apologies for the noise — also closing the linked PR #283.
- Use Claude Code CLI instead:
Update #2: Found the actual root cause —
git-lfsis required.The previous two analyses were both incorrect. The real issue is:
This repository uses git-lfs (see
.gitattributes) fortestdata/perf_map/*,*.gif, and large snapshot files. When a machine doesn't havegit-lfsinstalled, cloning the repo fails silently during marketplace addition, and Claude Desktop/Code shows only the generic "Failed to add marketplace." error with no indication that git-lfs is the problem.Proposed fix: Add a note to the README or plugin documentation mentioning that
git-lfsis a prerequisite for cloning the repository and installing the Claude plugin marketplace. This would save other users from the same confusing error.Reopening this as a documentation improvement request.
Description
When attempting to add
CodSpeedHQ/codspeedas a plugin marketplace in the Claude Desktop app (Cowork mode), the operation fails with a generic error:No additional error details are shown to the user.
Steps to Reproduce
+button)CodSpeedHQ/codspeedin the URL fieldRoot Cause Analysis
The plugin entry in
.claude-plugin/marketplace.jsonis missing theauthorfield:{ "name": "codspeed", "source": "./", "description": "Tools for accurate and reliable performance measurement and optimization" }Claude Desktop's
listAvailablePluginsvalidation schema requires theauthorfield on plugin entries, even though the Claude Code CLI does not enforce this. This is a known issue affecting many third-party plugins (see anthropics/claude-code#33068).Note: the
plugin.jsonalready has theauthorfield, but the marketplace entry itself also needs it for the Desktop app's validation to pass.Suggested Fix
Add the
authorfield to the plugin entry in.claude-plugin/marketplace.json:{ "name": "codspeed-plugin-marketplace", "owner": { "name": "CodSpeed" }, "plugins": [ { "name": "codspeed", "source": "./", "description": "Tools for accurate and reliable performance measurement and optimization", "author": { "name": "CodSpeed" } } ] }Environment