Onboarding: plugin install failed on a stale marketplace cache — unrelated plugins' manifest errors blocked the JFrog install

[sverdlov93]

Moved from jfrog-agent-hooks#50. Found while walking the real customer onboarding path end-to-end, 2026-07-26. Environment: Claude Code 2.0.60, plugin jfrog@claude-plugins-official v0.2.13→v0.2.15, JFrog CLI 2.86.0→2.116.0, macOS arm64.

What happened

claude plugin install jfrog@claude-plugins-official failed outright on the first attempt, with ~80 schema validation errors:

Invalid schema: plugins.0.source: Invalid input, plugins.1.source: Invalid input, …
plugins.74: Unrecognized key(s) in object: 'displayName', …

None of those errors were ours. The CLI validates the entire claude-plugins-official marketplace manifest (273 plugins) as one unit, so invalid entries belonging to other plugins prevented any plugin from installing — including JFrog. The JFrog entry itself was valid.

The error output lists numeric indices, not plugin names, so there is no way for a user to tell whose entry is broken or that the problem isn't JFrog's.

How it affected onboarding

This is the very first step. A developer told "install the JFrog plugin" hits a wall of schema errors that appear to be about the JFrog plugin, with no actionable message. Most people would stop here and report "the JFrog plugin is broken."

There is also no JFrog-owned install path to fall back on: jfrog/claude-plugin ships only .claude-plugin/plugin.json and no marketplace.json, so customers must go through the shared aggregate and inherit every other plugin's breakage.

How it was eventually resolved

Running claude plugin marketplace update claude-plugins-official re-fetched a valid manifest; the install then succeeded (v0.2.15). The failure was a stale local cache — install does not refresh it automatically.

Verified afterwards with a genuine clean install (uninstall → install) that the path works once the cache is current.

Where the fix likely belongs

Piece	Owner
Docs: if install fails with marketplace schema errors, run claude plugin marketplace update … then retry; optional own marketplace.json / direct-add path	This repo (jfrog/claude-plugin)
Per-entry validation instead of all-or-nothing; auto-refresh stale cache on install	Upstream Claude Code

Suggested docs / product fix (this repo)

1. README install section: document the marketplace update recovery step.
2. Consider shipping a JFrog-owned marketplace / direct install path so customers are not blocked by unrelated plugins' manifest breakage.