Claude Mods: The Biggest Claude Code Upgrade Yet

Claude Mods let you rewrite, customize, and extend Claude Code itself — changing what Claude does before, during, and after any event it runs. Anthropic just shipped them as the release version of what used to be called function hooks, and they turn Claude Code into something you can reprogram like a plugin platform. I've been building with them since launch, and this is the biggest upgrade to Claude Code since Skills. Here's exactly how they work — and how to start using them today.

What Are Claude Mods?

Claude Mods are a way to control, edit, and customize Claude Code itself. Before this, you could nudge Claude's behavior with hooks and skills, but you were basically jerry-rigging it from the outside. Now you can get into the actual plumbing of the harness and edit it as you see fit.

Think of it as "everything is a plugin" — but for Claude Code itself. You can rewrite events, change the UI, and edit or create entirely new features inside Claude Code that never existed before.

If you were paying attention in early September, you saw this coming. Boris Cherny was tweeting about different ways to make Claude Code more customizable, and it showed up as something called "function hooks" in a GitHub PR. It wasn't available to everyone, and Anthropic was clearly still messing with it. Mods are that same idea, now shipped as a real, live feature.

There's almost no limit to what you can build. One person made a mod that spins up a multiplayer Doom server every time he's waiting for Claude to finish a task — filled with other people who are also using Claude and waiting. Or you can do something more practical, like live progress bars that show how your projects are coming along. The point is the leeway: you build mods that fit your workflow, whatever it looks like.

How Do Claude Mods Actually Work?

A mod changes Claude's behavior. Any time Claude is about to do something, a mod can modify what Claude would do — and it can hook in at a few different points.

Say you tell Claude to delete a build folder. A mod can change that behavior in one of four ways:

• Before — it runs something ahead of the event. Instead of deleting right away, it pauses and shows you the 41 files it's about to remove.
• The event itself — it changes what actually happens. Instead of deleting the files permanently, it sends them to the recycle bin.
• After — it runs something once the event is done. It shows you a receipt: "I deleted these 41 files, and here's where they were located."
• Around (wrap) — it brackets the whole thing with both a before and an after. It backs the files up first, then gives you the ability to undo — a real Control-Z for Claude's actions.

That delete example isn't a mod you have to build today — it's the framework. Anything Claude does, you can now intercept and change. That's the mental model: pick an event, decide whether you want to act before it, replace it, react after it, or wrap the whole thing.

Mods run on the plugin system. If you run /plugins, you'll see every mod you've installed listed right there, so you always know where they live.

What Can You Build With a Claude Mod?

Here are two mods I'm actually running, so you can see the range — one that changes the workflow and one that quietly augments the interface.

The next-steps mod

After I asked Claude to build a simple habit-tracker app, a custom pane populated at the bottom of my screen with three options for my next steps — commit it, polish the design, keep building. That pane never existed before this mod.

This is great if you don't always know your next move. Instead of manually prompting "hey, what do you think I should do next?", the options just pop up and I click one. It's a play on the prompt bar: normally you might get a single preloaded prompt, but why have one when you can have multiple paths ready to go?

The cache-clock mod

The second one augments my UI inside the desktop app — and everything that works in the desktop app also works in the terminal. This mod watches my warm cache.

Here's why that matters. Every time you send a message, Claude Code sends the entire conversation back to Anthropic's servers. If you have a warm cache, you pay roughly a 95% discount on that. But the cache only stays warm for about an hour, and you often have no idea how much time is left. My mod tells me directly: "you have 43 minutes before the cache goes cold." Right now my context window is at 160K tokens, and the mod also adds a compaction button — so if I'm five minutes from a cold cache and need to step away, I click it and Claude starts compacting the conversation for me.

That's the key lesson: a mod doesn't have to be a wild, huge workflow. It can be as simple as a custom status-line widget that augments your interface. But the most powerful Claude Code mod is going to be the one that's custom-built for you.

How Do You Create Your Own Claude Mod?

The good news: building mods is genuinely easy. Claude already understands how to generate them and how to install them. You just need to point it in the right direction — and that direction comes from an audit.

Here's the prompt to give Claude Code:

Audit how I use Claude Code. Read my last 30 sessions.
See what I asked for over and over, then suggest 5 Claude Code
mods that would fix these issues.

When I ran it, Claude read my transcripts and came back with five suggestions (plus an honorable mention). Mine included a rehearsal mod for demos, a mod to help track my projects, a "mod doctor," the cache clock, an undo module, and a fix for dictation — which turned out to be genuinely useful.

From there, you just tell Claude which one you want: "I like mod number one, let's implement that." Claude creates the plugin, installs it, and tells you to reload your plugins. That's it — you're off to the races.

The best part is how it behaves after that. A mod isn't a skill you have to invoke. It acts like a hook — once it's set, it keeps working automatically until you remove it. You don't prompt it, you don't trigger it, it just runs. And when you're done with it, you use plain natural language: "hey, turn that mod off" or "remove it."

Why Do Claude Mods Matter?

Because they move the power from Anthropic's hands into yours. You're no longer stuck with whatever default behavior ships — you can edit fundamental parts of how Claude Code handles your work.

I think in a few months we're going to see a full ecosystem build up around mods, the same way one formed around Skills. This is going to grow exponentially, with a flood of mods getting pushed to GitHub. But the real value won't be in the popular downloads — it'll be in the mod that's unique to you and your workflow. That's why I'd run that audit prompt first and see what Claude suggests for your specific sessions before you go browsing other people's.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between Claude Mods and skills?

Skills are capabilities you invoke — you call them when you need them. Mods act like hooks: once installed, they run automatically and change Claude's behavior in the background until you remove them. Mods can also rewrite events and edit the UI itself, which skills can't do.

Were Claude Mods called something else before?

Yes. They were originally called "function hooks" and showed up in early September as a GitHub PR, around when Boris Cherny was tweeting about making Claude Code more customizable. Mods are the shipped, release version of that feature.

Do Claude Mods work in the terminal or only the desktop app?

Both. Everything that works in the Claude Code desktop app also applies to the terminal — UI augmentations like custom panes and status widgets show up in each.

How do I see which mods I have installed?

Mods run on the plugin system, so run /plugins inside Claude Code to see every mod you've installed and where it lives.

How do I turn off a Claude Mod?

Use natural language. Just tell Claude "turn that mod off" or "remove it," and it handles the uninstall — no config editing required.

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