Choose AI integrations that solve a real task
All five are real and four are free. But two of them are the same product, one defaults to somebody else's server, and the order is the least important part.
By Alan Brown · Works with Claude Code
Five add-ons for Claude Code, installed in a set order, each one meant to fix the problem the last one creates. All five are real and four of the five are free. What they are, though, isn't quite what a list of five plugins suggests.
- 1️⃣ OmniRoute — github.com/sakshianil/OmniRoute. MIT. One endpoint in front of 237 providers, with automatic fallback when one runs out of quota. Not a plugin: it's a local proxy you install with npm install -g omniroute and point your tools at, on localhost:20128/v1. It never phones home — credentials stay encrypted on your machine.
- 2️⃣ Claude Mem — github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem, by Alex Newman. Apache 2.0. Captures what happens in a session, compresses it, and injects the relevant part into the next one. This one is a real plugin: /plugin marketplace add thedotmack/claude-mem, then /plugin install claude-mem.
- 3️⃣ Headroom — github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom. Apache 2.0. Compresses tool outputs, logs and file reads before they reach the model, and hands the model a retrieve tool for when it needs the full text back. Also not a plugin — it ships as a library, a local proxy or an MCP server. pip install "headroom-ai[all]", then headroom wrap claude.
- 4️⃣ Claude Code Setup — the official claim in the list, and it's the one that holds. It sits in Anthropic's own marketplace, authored by Anthropic, and it's a single read-only skill that scans your codebase and names the top one or two automations in each category — MCP servers, skills, hooks, subagents and slash commands. /plugin install claude-code-setup@claude-plugins-official.
- 5️⃣ Task Observer — by Eoghan Henn at rebelytics.com, CC BY 4.0. A skill, not a plugin: drop the folder into .claude/skills/. While you work it appends numbered entries to skill-observations/log.md — date, what happened, the suggested fix, and a general principle.
- 👇 The prompt below is the step the list skips: working out which of the five your setup has an actual problem for.
Context & limitations
Three of the five aren't plugins. Only Claude Mem and Claude Code Setup install with /plugin. OmniRoute is a global npm package, Headroom is a pip install that wraps your agent in a local proxy, and Task Observer is a folder of markdown you copy into .claude/skills/. That's not a complaint about any of them — it's four different things to maintain, four different update paths, and four different things to remember you installed when something breaks and you can't work out why the model is seeing what it's seeing.
And the order does not chain. OmniRoute and Headroom are the same product category: both sit between your agent and the model, and both compress on the way through — OmniRoute stacks RTK and Caveman for a claimed 15-95%, Headroom does its own compression and starts its own local proxy when you run headroom wrap claude. Stack them and you have two proxies compressing the same stream, each one's output becoming the other's input. "Each one fixes the problem the last one creates" is a good line, but 1 and 3 are alternatives, not a sequence. Pick one.
The numbers drift the way tool numbers always drift. 237 providers is right. "90 of them free" is in OmniRoute's README, but the project's own repo description says 50+ — and the number that actually matters is 11, the ones it calls permanently free with no card (Kiro, Qoder, Pollinations, LongCat). Headroom's headline is 60-95%, which is the JSON case; its own README says about 20% for coding agents, and its benchmarks land at 21-57%. Worth knowing before you build a monthly budget on the big number.
The one to read the install prompts on is Claude Mem. Its default memory provider is CMEM Pro, a hosted service that asks you to sign in through a browser, free for 30 days and then falling back to your Anthropic plan unless you subscribe. So the plugin whose whole job is remembering your project ships pointed at somebody else's server by default, and your session content is what it's remembering. It's opt-out, not hidden — install with --provider host, or set CLAUDE_MEM_ONLINE_OPTIN=false, and it stays on your machine. Just decide that on purpose rather than by pressing enter.
The honest version of this list is shorter than five. Anthropic's own marketplace carries a warning above every plugin in it — "Anthropic does not control what MCP servers, files, or other software are included in plugins and cannot verify that they will work as intended or that they won't change" — and that's the line to read before you route your code through a stranger's proxy to save tokens. Meanwhile the two cheapest fixes are already on your machine and cost nothing: a CLAUDE.md that's actually written (The Claude Code setup, and the step everyone skips) and the official setup skill telling you what this specific repo is missing. Start there. Add a proxy when you've felt the problem it solves, not because it was number one in a list.
Do this yourself
A demonstrated need and a bounded trial are stronger reasons to install an add-on than its position in a list.
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