Tether plugin marketplace

Private distribution hub for the Tether remote-Windows MCP plugin. This repo hosts:

• The Claude Code marketplace, plugin manifest, slash commands, skill, and SessionStart hook.
• The GitHub Releases that host tether-mcp.exe, tether-launcher.exe, and the tether.mcpb Claude Desktop bundle.

The MCP server source code (Go) lives in a separate repo (EntityReborn/RemoteClaude); a tagged release there builds all the artifacts and uploads them here.

Install (per tech, once)

Pick one path based on which Claude client you use. Both end up at the same mcp__tether__* tool surface; updates flow through different mechanisms.

Claude Code

Prerequisites:

• Windows 10 or 11 (the MCP binary is Windows-only).
• GitHub CLI installed and authenticated:

gh auth login

The account you authenticate with must have read access to this repo. The SessionStart hook uses gh release download under that identity.

Then in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/EntityReborn/tether-plugin
/plugin install tether@wildfrog-internal

That's it. On the next session start the plugin downloads the matching tether-mcp.exe from this repo's Releases, verifies its SHA-256, and caches it under the plugin's per-user data directory. Future sessions reuse the cached copy until version.txt changes here.

Claude Desktop (Pro / Team / Enterprise)

Prerequisites:

• Windows 10 or 11.
• A paid Claude Desktop tier (Pro, Team, or Enterprise). Local MCP servers are gated to paid plans; free-tier users won't see the Extensions panel and should use Claude Code instead.

Steps:

1. Download tether.mcpb from the latest Release: releases/latest

   gh release download --repo EntityReborn/tether-plugin --pattern tether.mcpb

2. Open Claude Desktop -> Settings -> Extensions.
3. Drag tether.mcpb into the panel (or click "Install Extension" and browse to it). Approve the permissions prompt.
4. Restart Claude Desktop if the new server doesn't appear in the tool picker immediately.

Verify by asking a new conversation "start a new remote session" — Claude should call mcp__tether__new_session and read back a code like BLUE-FROG-LAZY-CAT.

Update flow

When EntityReborn/RemoteClaude publishes a new release:

1. Its release CI builds tether-mcp.exe, tether-launcher.exe, and tether.mcpb, plus the SHA-256 sidecar for the MCP binary.
2. It creates a Release on this repo tagged v<X.Y.N> with all four artifacts attached.
3. It pushes a commit to this repo bumping plugins/tether/version.txt and plugins/tether/.claude-plugin/plugin.json.

How techs pick up the change:

Claude Code techs: run /plugin marketplace update (or let Claude Code auto-update if configured). Next session start, the SessionStart hook sees the bumped version.txt, notices its cached binary no longer matches, and re-downloads. No manual file handling.

Claude Desktop techs: the launcher bundled inside their existing tether.mcpb install hits this repo's Releases API on every Claude Desktop spawn (3-second budget, SHA-256 verified) and atomically swaps the cached tether-mcp.exe if a newer version is published. Transparent — no action required. The only time a Claude Desktop tech needs to re-download tether.mcpb is when the launcher itself changes, which is rare.

Layout

.claude-plugin/marketplace.json          marketplace manifest (1 plugin)
plugins/tether/
  .claude-plugin/plugin.json             plugin manifest
  version.txt                            pinned binary version (e.g. "0.2.61")
  hooks/
    hooks.json                           SessionStart hook wiring
    ensure-binary.ps1                    downloader + integrity check
  commands/                              /remote-new, /remote-list, /remote-end
  skills/tether/SKILL.md                 operating manual
README.md

Dev override

Claude Code

Maintainers can test a locally-built binary without cutting a release. Drop the .exe at:

plugins/tether/bin/tether-mcp.exe

The hook checks for this path first; if present, it's used verbatim and no download happens. plugins/tether/bin/ is gitignored, so end users never see it.

To produce a usable binary:

# In the RemoteClaude (source) repo:
.\build.ps1 -Target mcp

# Then copy to the dev-override path:
Copy-Item mcp\builds\tether-mcp.exe ..\tether-plugin\plugins\tether\bin\tether-mcp.exe

Claude Desktop

There's no separate dev-override hook; just install a freshly-built .mcpb directly:

# In the RemoteClaude (source) repo:
.\build.ps1 -Target mcpb

# Result: mcp/builds/tether.mcpb
# Drag that into Claude Desktop -> Settings -> Extensions.
# Uninstall the previous Tether extension first if you have one.

The bundled launcher will then exec the just-built tether-mcp.exe from inside the bundle (because the cache is empty on first run) rather than pulling from GitHub Releases. On subsequent spawns it checks Releases as usual; to force it to stay on the local build, either keep your network offline or block api.github.com.

Security posture

• Every published tether-mcp.exe is accompanied by a SHA-256 sidecar in the same Release. The Claude Code SessionStart hook refuses to install if the hashes diverge.
• The Claude Desktop launcher uses the same trust source: it pulls tether-mcp.exe from this repo's GitHub Releases over HTTPS and SHA-256-verifies the bytes against the matching sidecar before swapping the cached binary. Mismatch -> reject the update, keep the cached (or bundled fallback) binary. The launcher does NOT trust any local sidecar (.new, ~, etc.) — that path was identified as a privilege-escalation primitive (H2 in the source repo's security review) and removed in v0.2.13. See EntityReborn/RemoteClaude SPEC section 11.4 for the full threat-model discussion.
• gh release download (used by the Claude Code path) and the launcher's anonymous GitHub API access (used by Claude Desktop) both depend on the publishing identity of this repo. Deprovisioning a person from the Claude Code path is just revoking their repo access on github.com; the Claude Desktop path is identity-less (anonymous public-ish reads of Release assets), so removing access there means uninstalling the extension on their machine.
• No auto-promotion of in-use binaries. If the cached tether-mcp.exe is locked by a running Claude Code session, the hook tells the user to restart manually; the Claude Desktop launcher writes to a .staging path and atomically renames, which is allowed because the launcher executes before spawning the MCP.