On October 1, 2026, Anthropic added a new feature called mods to Claude Code, its AI coding tool. Mods let users rewrite Claude Code's behavior, its interface and even its features themselves using small TypeScript functions.
What mods can do
According to the official blog, mods can rewrite prompts, add new screens, replace built-in features and add entirely new ones. The key point is that you can add the features you or your team need without waiting for Anthropic to build them.
How they work
Claude Code emits an "event" for every action. A mod is triggered by these events and can run extra logic before or after an action, replace the action with different logic, or wrap logic around the entire action.
Mods are distributed bundled inside plugins. Because they reuse the existing mechanisms for installing and sharing plugins, they can be set up the same way in both the CLI and the desktop app.
Example uses
The official blog gives the following examples of how teams can use mods.
- Display CI/CD status in the Claude Code interface
- Put safeguards on actions that affect production environments
- Record mod invocations as audit logs
Security cautions
Mods are not isolated in a sandbox; they access the machine with the same permissions as Claude Code itself. Before installing one, you need to make sure you can trust its source.
On Team and Enterprise plans, as well as on machines where managed settings are applied, a built-in mod called sec-default is active and restricts mods installed by users from doing dangerous things, such as overriding permission deny rules. Administrators can also have their own mods load first in place of sec-default, but in that case they are advised to add sec-default to the list of mods to load if they want to keep its restrictions.
CoAI's take
This update expands Claude Code from a tool with a fixed set of features into a foundation you can reshape around your own development workflow. That is convenient, but because mods run with broad permissions, organizations will be on safer ground if administrators decide in advance which mods may be installed.
