Tool calls with icons and timings, edits as diff cards, tables, code and Mermaid charts as cards,
a live usage band, and fifteen skins you can repaint or have Claude design for you.

Needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later, in a terminal or the desktop app's Code tab. Run both inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add hellosverre/claude-skins

/plugin install skins@hellosverre-mods

Restart Claude Code. The noir skin is on; type /skin to change it.

Looking for more mods? /plugin install mod-store@hellosverre-mods, then /mods browses and installs about 2,700 of them from a pane, showing what each one can access first.

skins checks for a new release once a day and shows a toast when you are behind. To update:

claude plugin marketplace update hellosverre-mods

claude plugin update skins@hellosverre-mods

Then restart Claude Code. Open sessions keep the version they started with.

claude plugin uninstall skins@hellosverre-mods

To keep it installed but go back to Claude Code's own drawing, run /skin off.

Design one with Claude. Ask "make me a skin that feels like a sunset". skins gives Claude a design tool, so it builds the skin and applies it while you watch. Repainting a built-in skin saves it as your own my-<skin>. Choices are remembered across sessions.

Drawn by the mod's own card code (scripts/previews.ts), not screenshots.

Every card has a Copy button (tables also as text, the table as drawn; a reply of several blocks ends in copy reply) and animates once, on first draw, respecting reduced motion. Only the drawing changes: the stored conversation and what the model reads are untouched. Agents, plan mode and the permission prompt keep Claude Code's own drawing.

Chart hints. While charts are on, Claude gets a short model-only note (about 130 tokens, estimated from its 458 characters) saying ```mermaid fences draw here, so it reaches for a chart when one reads better. Never for headless claude -p runs. /skin hints off drops it and keeps charts drawing.

Light and dark. Every skin has both and follows Claude Code's theme. On auto it follows your terminal (COLORFGBG) or the system. Force one with SKINS_THEME=light or SKINS_THEME=dark.

skins adds $.skins.markdown to $. It draws markdown the way skins draws a reply, in the person's skin. It answers a tree, or undefined when skins is off or the text holds nothing it draws, and throws on a malformed argument. It draws no copy or fold controls, because a press cannot cross from one mod's tree to another's. List skins under dependencies in your plugin.json and Claude Code lays its types into your .claude-plugin/types/.

let drawn
try {
  drawn = await $.skins.markdown({ surface: e.surface, text, columns: e.props.bodyColumns })
} catch {}
return drawn ?? <Markdown text={text} />

Checked by hand on Windows (terminal and desktop app, 0.3.0) and run on Linux (terminal, 0.5.0, Claude Code 2.1.288, 168 engine tests). CI runs the tests, the manifest checks and the type check on Linux, Windows and macOS. macOS, VS Code and mobile have not been looked at by hand. The surface × OS matrix and render times per row are in docs/compat.md. To measure on your machine:

scripts/bench.sh

Other mods that change how the transcript looks, from their READMEs on 2026-10-10. Blank means the README does not say.

Where they are better: tweakcc recolours all of Claude Code, not only what a hook can redraw, at the cost of patching the binary. Prismantis handles right-to-left text, copies tables as HTML and typesets math as images. glint makes file paths clickable and keeps a band of the last reply's links. ccstatusline has a far deeper status line. claude-gfm-render draws sequence and other diagrams as SVG on the desktop, where skins falls back to a code card. What skins plans next is in ROADMAP.md.

skins draws and remembers, nothing else. It reads the session directory, your context and plan usage, the theme setting and SKINS_THEME / COLORFGBG, and keeps its settings in the mod store. Its one network call is the daily version check: a GET of this repo's plugin.json on raw.githubusercontent.com, sending nothing. On auto it asks the OS for light or dark mode (defaults on macOS, gsettings on GNOME). It compacts or copies only when you press the button. Check it yourself with claude plugin validate ..

Terminal diagrams are laid out by beautiful-mermaid (MIT), bundled into hooks/vendor/mermaid-ascii.js with its licence in the header. To rebuild it:

cd scripts/vendor && npm install && npm run build

git clone https://github.com/hellosverre/claude-skins && cd claude-skins

claude --plugin-dir .

Saving a file reloads the mod in the running session. Tests: claude plugin test .. Previews: npx tsx scripts/previews.ts. A new built-in skin is one file: copy hooks/themes/nord.ts, change the colours and words, add a line to hooks/themes/index.ts.

• redgreen: test results in a pane beside the chat
• smart-compact: compacts after a commit, green tests, before the prompt cache expires, or when Claude asks
• mod-store: browse, search and install 2,700 mods from a pane

MIT