A step-by-step setup guide — install it, configure it, run your first command in about 15 minutes.
What this actually is
Anthropic publishes a free, open-source HR plugin for Claude. It is a bundle of instructions that teaches Claude how to handle standard people-ops work the same way every time: offer letters, onboarding plans, interview kits, performance review structures, policy answers, comp analysis and headcount reports.
It is not an HRIS. It is not an applicant tracking system. It is a very well-briefed assistant that stops you retyping the same brief every Monday.
Two things you will see mentioned:
- Commands — you type them, like
/draft-offer. Six of them. - Skills — Claude loads them automatically when your request matches. Six of those too. You never type them.
Before you start: which one are you using?
The install is different depending on how you run Claude.
| You use… | Install method | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Cowork (Anthropic’s desktop app) | Click install from the plugin catalogue | Easy — no terminal |
| Claude Code (terminal) | Two commands | Easy if you’re comfortable in a terminal |
If you’re not sure which you have, you almost certainly want Cowork. Start there.
Step 1 — Install the plugin
Option A: Cowork (recommended for most HR teams)
- Go to claude.com/plugins
- Find human-resources
- Click install
- Done — no terminal, no files to edit
Option B: Claude Code (terminal)
Run these two commands:
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
claude plugin install human-resources@knowledge-work-plugins
The first command registers Anthropic’s plugin marketplace. The second installs the HR plugin from it.
Then reload inside Claude Code:
/reload-plugins
One thing to watch: the plugin’s own README shows an older command — claude plugins add knowledge-work-plugins/human-resources. Ignore it. Use the two marketplace commands above.
Step 2 — Check it worked
Inside Claude Code, run:
/plugin
That opens the plugin manager, where you can see what’s installed and enabled.
Your command names may look longer than you expect. Claude Code namespaces commands by plugin, so /draft-offer may actually be:
/human-resources:draft-offer
/human-resources:onboarding
Don’t guess — check the plugin manager and use what it shows you.
Step 3 — Save your company details once
This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that saves the most time. Instead of retyping “we’re an 84-person company in Nicosia with 21 days leave” into every prompt, save it once.
Where the file goes:
- Cowork — save it in any folder you’ve shared with Cowork via the folder picker. The plugin finds it automatically.
- Claude Code — save it at
human-resources/.claude/settings.local.json
What goes in it (a working Cyprus example):
{
"company": "Aegis Technologies Ltd",
"headquarters": "Nicosia, Cyprus",
"employeeCount": 84,
"benefits": {
"healthInsurance": "Private medical, employee + dependants",
"pto": "21 days",
"parentalLeave": "Statutory entitlement plus 4 weeks company top-up"
},
"compensation": {
"currency": "EUR",
"equityType": "Share options",
"vestingSchedule": "4 years, 1 year cliff"
}
}
Keep out of this file: employee medical information, passwords, API keys, candidate records. It’s for general company settings only.
If you skip this step or leave something out, the plugin will simply ask you for it as you go.
Step 4 — Run your first command
Start with onboarding. It’s the friendliest one and needs the least setup.
Type /onboarding and give it the details:
/onboarding
New hire: Maria Georgiou
Role: Customer Support Specialist
Start date: 3 August 2026
Team: Customer Experience
Manager: Andreas Nicolaou
Location: Limassol
You get back a pre-employment checklist, equipment and access requirements, a first-day timetable, a first-week plan, proposed 30/60/90-day goals, and a list of meetings and introductions.
Running offices in more than one city? Ask for both versions in one go:
/onboarding
Same role as above, but produce two variants:
1. Office-based, Limassol
2. Fully remote, employee located outside Cyprus
For the remote variant include equipment delivery,
secure account access and a virtual introduction schedule.
The six commands, with copy-paste examples
/draft-offer — offer letters
/draft-offer
Role: Senior Accountant
Location: Nicosia
Base salary: €42,000
Annual bonus: up to 10%
Start date: 1 September 2026
Manager: Finance Director
Employment type: Full time
Returns a compensation summary, employment terms, benefits summary, offer letter draft and notes for the hiring manager. Your HR lead reviews the final document before it goes out.
/onboarding — new starter plans
Covered above. Give it name, role, team, start date, manager, location.
/performance-review — review structure
/performance-review
Employee: [initials only]
Role: Backend Engineer
Review period: Jan–Jun 2026
Objectives set: [paste]
Completed work: [paste]
Peer feedback notes: [paste]
Produce: self-assessment questions, manager review template,
evidence-based feedback sections, development objectives
and calibration notes.
It organises the evidence you give it. It doesn’t invent performance facts or hand out ratings — you supply the facts, it improves the structure.
/policy-lookup — answering "can I…?" questions
/policy-lookup
Can employees work remotely from another EU country
for two weeks?
It searches a connected knowledge base, or reads handbook content you paste in. You get a plain-language answer, the relevant policy quoted, any exceptions, and the right person to contact. If no policy exists, it says so rather than inventing one.
Good for annual leave, sick leave, parental leave, remote work, expenses, business travel, benefits and training budgets.
/comp-analysis — salary bands and offers
/comp-analysis
Attached: approved salary bands (Levels 1–6, EUR).
Candidate offer: €42,000 base, Senior Accountant, Nicosia.
Show where this sits in band, compare to current team members
at the same level, and flag any compression risk.
/people-report — headcount and turnover
/people-report
Prepare a Q2 people report showing headcount, hires, departures,
voluntary turnover, vacancies and time to hire by department.
Do not identify individual employees.
Need it split by office:
Break down the same metrics by office: Nicosia, Limassol,
Larnaca, Paphos. Suppress any group smaller than five.
That last line matters. In small offices, a “department of two” identifies people instantly. Always check the numbers and the source dates before you circulate anything.
The six skills (these fire on their own)
You don’t type these. Claude loads them when your request matches.
| Skill | What it kicks in for |
|---|---|
recruiting-pipeline | Tracking candidates through source → screen → interview → offer |
employee-handbook | Policy, benefits and procedure questions |
compensation-benchmarking | Market comparisons on base, equity and total comp |
org-planning | Headcount planning, org design, team structure |
people-analytics | Attrition trends, engagement signals, workforce data |
interview-prep | Competency questions, scorecards, debrief templates |
So you don’t need a command for either of these — just ask:
Build me an interview kit for a Finance Manager reporting to the
Finance Director. Key requirements: IFRS reporting, team leadership,
ERP migration experience.
Produce competency questions, role-specific questions, a candidate
scorecard, interviewer instructions and a debrief template.
Give me a recruiting update for the Sales Manager vacancy.
Show candidates by stage, days in stage and interview bottlenecks.
Flag anyone stuck over 14 days.
For the pipeline one without an ATS connected, upload an anonymised spreadsheet in this shape:
Candidate ID | Vacancy | Stage | Date entered stage | Source
C-1042 | Sales Manager | Screen | 2026-07-02 | LinkedIn
C-1043 | Sales Manager | Interview | 2026-06-28 | Referral
C-1051 | Sales Manager | Sourced | 2026-07-14 | Agency
Connecting your existing tools (do this last)
Everything above works with nothing connected — you paste or upload, Claude works with what you give it. Connectors just remove the pasting.
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| HRIS | Workday, BambooHR, Rippling |
| ATS | Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby |
| Compensation | Pave, Radford |
| Chat | Slack, Teams |
| Calendar | Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 |
| Gmail, Microsoft 365 |
With connections live, an onboarding run can pull the new starter’s details from the HRIS, find their manager and department, grab onboarding docs from your knowledge base, draft the first-week calendar and produce an access checklist — without you typing any of it.
Two notes. Connecting an HRIS doesn’t mean Claude should see every employee field; permissions are yours to scope. And plugins with connections are trusted software that can reach files and external services, so install from sources you trust.
Do this in month two, not week one. You’ll get real value from manual uploads long before you need integration.
A sensible rollout
- Week one — Install, set up
settings.local.json, run/onboardingon completely fictional data. Get a feel for it. - Week two — Run the same command on real-but-anonymised data. Note every place it guessed wrong or asked for something you hadn’t thought to give it.
- Week three — Add your own templates and required questions into the skill files. Everything is plain Markdown and JSON, so you can edit it directly.
- Before you widen access — decide who may use it, which files it may touch, which outputs need a second pair of eyes, and how long uploaded information sticks around.
Where the line sits
These commands are for preparation and administration: first drafts, checklists, organising information you already have, structuring interviews, summarising reports.
They are not for deciding. Nothing here should be rejecting candidates, setting salaries, issuing final contracts or assigning performance ratings on its own.
One rule covers it:
Claude prepares. HR verifies. An authorised person decides.
Plugin repository: anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins — free and open source.
Photographs by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash, free to use under the Unsplash License.
