Install Pali Canon in Claude Code

This page shows how to add Pali Canon to Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding and research assistant that runs in a terminal, in an editor or in the Claude desktop app. It takes two commands and about a minute.

For Claude Desktop (the chat app), use the .mcpb extension instead; see the Install section of the README.

What you need

Claude Code, signed in. See Set up Claude Code.
Node.js 20 or newer. Pali Canon’s server is a small Node.js program. Check by typing node --version in a terminal. If the command is not found, or the number is below 20, install Node.js from nodejs.org.

No account, key or payment is needed.

Install

Type these two lines into Claude Code, one at a time:

/plugin marketplace add DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude
/plugin install pali-canon@pali-canon

The first line tells Claude Code where to find the plugin (this GitHub repository). You only do this once.
The second line installs it. In pali-canon@pali-canon, the first part is the plugin and the second part is the catalog (called a marketplace) you just added. Claude Code opens a panel; choose Install.

Then start a new session (or type /reload-plugins) so the plugin loads.

The same thing from a terminal

If you prefer your normal terminal (outside a Claude Code session):

claude plugin marketplace add DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude
claude plugin install pali-canon@pali-canon

Check that it works

Type /plugin and open the Installed tab: you should see pali-canon marked as enabled. Then try one of the four study skills:

/pali-canon:study MN 10
/pali-canon:compare AN 3.65
/pali-canon:pali-word anicca in SN 22.59
/pali-canon:method Kv 1

Or simply ask: “Use Pali Canon to read MN 10 with a translation and cite the PTS page.”

What gets installed

Part	What it does
One MCP server (`pali-canon`)	Gives Claude read-only tools to look up citations and PTS pages, read the Pāli of the whole Tipiṭaka offline, fetch English translations and look up Pāli words. See How it works.
Five skills	`study`, `compare`, `pali-word`, `method` and `memorise`: step-by-step study methods Claude follows when you call them.

The whole Pāli Canon (about 6 MB, compressed) comes with the plugin, so the Pāli works without internet. English translations and dictionary entries are fetched live from dhammatalks.org, Access to Insight, Ancient Buddhist Texts, the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and their official mirrors. Nothing else is contacted, and nothing you ask is stored. Each text keeps its own licence, mostly non-commercial; see THIRD_PARTY.md.

Updating

Claude Code does not update plugins from community catalogs automatically unless you turn that on. To get a new release:

/plugin marketplace update pali-canon

then open /plugin, find pali-canon and choose Update (or run claude plugin update pali-canon@pali-canon in a terminal). To have it happen by itself, open /plugin, go to Marketplaces, select pali-canon and choose Enable auto-update.

Removing it

/plugin uninstall pali-canon@pali-canon
/plugin marketplace remove pali-canon

If something goes wrong

What you see	What to do
The tools are missing, or `/plugin` shows the `pali-canon` server failed to start	Usually Node.js is missing or too old. Install Node.js 20 or newer, then type `/reload-plugins`.
`Plugin "pali-canon" not found in marketplace`	Run `/plugin marketplace update pali-canon` and try the install line again, exactly as written above.
A note that the plugin’s packages are not installed	Harmless. The server is a single self-contained file and does not need those packages.
Translations or dictionary lookups fail	The sites may be down or blocked on your network. The Pāli text still works offline, and Claude will say which source failed.

Still stuck? Open an issue with the message you saw.

For maintainers

The two files that make this work are .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (the catalog, named pali-canon, with one plugin at the repository root) and .claude-plugin/plugin.json (the plugin’s name, version and listing details). The MCP server is declared in .mcp.json and the skills live in skills/. tests/core.test.mjs checks these files against the Claude Code plugin reference. To check them with Claude Code’s own validator:

claude plugin validate .

The expected result is Validation passed with warnings: one warning that the contributor file CLAUDE.md is not loaded by plugin users (intended), and one that the plugin has no icon yet.

Because plugin.json sets version, users only receive a release when that number goes up. Bump it with every release, as described in docs/development.md.