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Plugins

Propel uses these when they're present and works without them. propel setup offers them: one click in the local console, a y/N prompt (default No) in the cluster terminal setup. But propel init never installs them, and that distinction is deliberate.

Why Propel doesn't install these for you

A Claude Code plugin can ship hooks, slash commands, agents and MCP servers — it executes code in your session. Deciding whose code may run in a research environment is a judgment call, and Propel's own rule is that judgment calls go to a human. Installing third-party software as a side effect of "set up my research workflow" would be that rule broken by its own author.

Two specifics sharpen it. claude plugin install has no --version or --ref, so an install is always whatever the source holds at that moment — meaning an unchanged Propel release would become a delivery path for whatever those plugins ship that day. And --scope defaults to user, so installing during propel init in one repo would enable the plugin in every project on the machine, not the one being initialized.

So: propel offers them, publisher named, and you choose. Nothing installs itself.

What Propel Uses

OpenAI Codex CLI — the second model

Not a plugin. Propel drives codex exec --sandbox read-only directly through the codex-bridge subagent, so there is no plugin layer and no slash command. Powers codex-consult, the automatic dual-model layer — see Codex — Two Models.

curl -fsSL https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.sh | sh   # native binary in ~/.local/bin, no Node
codex login                    # on a cluster: codex login --device-auth

Or let propel do it: the setup console locally, propel setup on a cluster. Without it, gates run single-model and say so once; nothing blocks.

claude-hud — by jarrodwatts

Repo: github.com/jarrodwatts/claude-hud

A status line showing model, context budget, token cost and running subagents. Propel's own status line wraps it: hud renders first, then Propel appends a Codex task block beneath the agents line, showing consults in flight and recently finished. It runs under Node.js, so this is the one piece of Propel's setup that needs Node. Install it from propel setup, then run propel codex statusline --install.

Without it, propel codex statusline still works — it just prints the Codex block on its own.

code-review — by Anthropic

Source: code-review@claude-plugins-official

Anthropic's general-purpose review rubric. c-review runs it alongside Propel's domain auditors and the Gate 3 Codex consult, then merges everything into one card with per-source attribution.

It fires automatically — at Gate 3 on a non-trivial diff, before a PR, and whenever you ask for a deeper or more thorough review. When the plugin is absent, the card is produced from the auditors and Codex alone, with one line saying so. It never blocks a review for want of an optional rubric.

Compatibility Notes

Different failure modes. /c-review checks that its plugin is installed and pauses if not — it will not fabricate plugin command syntax. The Codex layer does the opposite: it reports the problem once and proceeds single-model, because a missing second opinion should never block a gate.
Plugin invocation names can vary. If your local install exposes a slash command under a different name than the plugin's default, Claude will ask you to confirm the exact invocation rather than guessing.
Plugins are external to Propel's MIT scope. Each plugin has its own license and maintainer. Check the linked repo for terms before sending code or secrets through it.
Secrets are redacted at the boundary. Anything sent to Codex or to the code-review plugin leaves your machine. Both paths follow the "don't send secrets" guardrail — and if a Codex brief cannot be written without one, the consult is skipped and you're told why — but project-level review of what gets sent is your responsibility. If your code can't leave the machine at all, /disable-codex is the right call.

Know Another Plugin That Fits?

The list above is intentionally narrow — only plugins Propel actually relies on or has been used alongside in practice. If you've found another plugin that pairs cleanly with the pipeline (without breaking the assistant-not-agent contract or short-circuiting a gate), open an issue on the Propel repo and we'll consider adding it.