How to Use the Claude Code Playground Plugin

The Claude code team just shipped a new playground plug-in and essentially gives us a whole new way to interact with Claude. [music]

Claude. [music] Instead of typing instructions, Claude can now build you an interactive tool.

[music] Sliders, click regions, approve reject buttons tailored to whatever you're working on. You interact with it visually and the playground generates

new instructions to Claude for you.

Claude builds the interface. You give

feedback through it. Let me show you how it works. [music]

it works. [music] Hey, Alex here from Grit AI Studio.

Today we're looking at the Playground plug-in, one of the official plugins from Anthropics curated marketplace.

This one is different from most plugins.

It doesn't add a slash command or an MCP server. It teaches Claude a new skill,

server. It teaches Claude a new skill, the ability to generate self-contained interactive HTML playgrounds. Single

file apps that open in your browser with controls on one side, live preview on the other, and a prompt output at the bottom that you can copy back into

Claude. Think of it as an on the-fly

Claude. Think of it as an on the-fly artifact built by Claude, but running locally, fully self-contained, and designed specifically for exploration,

feedback, and configuration. Or you can think of it this way. Claude builds

custom interfaces to capture your feedback, visual tools that translate your interactions back into precise instructions. Let me show you how to

instructions. Let me show you how to install it, and then we'll build a few things live.

Installation is straightforward. The

playground plugin is in Anthropic's official marketplace which is already available in Cloud Code by default. So

you just run /plugin and then search for it or you can run this command. You might

need to restart Claude after you've installed it. And that's it. No

installed it. And that's it. No

marketplace to add first. The official

one is preconfigured. So, this is a skill-based plug-in, which means that Claude automatically knows when to use it based on your request. You can ask for a playground, an interactive

explorer, or a visual tool for something, and Claude picks up the skill. Let me show you what that looks

skill. Let me show you what that looks like in practice.

So, before we demo, let me explain the architecture really quickly. Every

playground Claude generates follows the same pattern. One, it builds a single

same pattern. One, it builds a single HTML file. All CSS and JavaScript is

HTML file. All CSS and JavaScript is inlined. There's no external

inlined. There's no external dependencies, no CDN links, no build step, just one file that you can open, share, or save. Two, every playground

has this three panel layout. There's an

interactive control on one side with sliders, drop downs, color pickers, toggles, you name it. And then there's a live preview on the other side that updates instantly as you change

anything. And then finally, there's a

anything. And then finally, there's a prompt output panel at the bottom. Yeah.

So three, the prompt output. That's

really a key part of this innovation.

It's not a value dump. It generates

natural language instructions that you can copy back into Claude and it only mentions what you changed from the defaults. Claude built the interface to

defaults. Claude built the interface to understand what you want. Now it speaks it back.

The plug-in ships with six templates out of the box. the design playground, the data explorer, a concept map, there's a document critique, then you have the

diff view, and there's a code map. So,

let's try a few of these out. Could you

explain our codebase with a code map playground where I can ask questions about specific parts of our code?

Now, you can explore and ask questions to dig deeper. Select one of the nodes and say I don't fully understand this one. [music]

one. [music] Here's another example. I want to optimize our claude MD file, but I'm scared of removing useful stuff. Could

you review it and then use the document critique playground highlighting all suggestions so that I can approve, reject, or make comments before we actually update the file? Or you can just ask it to give you inline

suggestions that you can approve, reject, or comment.

Claude will try to use the templates, but if you ask for something a bit outside of these, it will go off and create custom playgrounds for us, which opens up some really cool use cases. I

guess the original idea was to use playgrounds to feed back to CLA, but it clearly has a ton of different use cases. I see a lot of people are using

cases. I see a lot of people are using playgrounds to create their own interactive learning experiences.

Let's try out another one. We've applied

quite a few database migrations recently and I'm getting a bit lost here. Could

you use the data explorer playground to help me navigate some of our data?

[music] A lot of clever people have already come up with some really cool examples on X.

Someone even built a way to send the feedback straight back to Claude using a neat little MCP trick. Essentially

removing the need to copy and paste. In

particular, I love this one for image generation feedback loops. essentially

allowing you to pass precise annotations back to Nana Banana as it improves the images.

Or this one here where they built an animation playground allowing her to explore all sorts of interactions.

Really cool.

Okay, let's try making our own custom playground. Let's start with something

playground. Let's start with something that I feel shows off one key use case for the playground plug-in visual feedback. Create an image annotation

feedback. Create an image annotation playground. I'll paste in a screenshot

playground. I'll paste in a screenshot of my apps dashboard. I want to click on areas, draw rectangles around problems, and add feedback comments to each

region. Watch what Claude does. It's

region. Watch what Claude does. It's

generating a complete annotation tool.

canvas for the image, drawing tools, a comment panel, and it's all in a single HTML file. And here it is. I've loaded a

HTML file. And here it is. I've loaded a screenshot of a dashboard that I'm working on. Let me walk through the

working on. Let me walk through the interface. So, here we have the main

interface. So, here we have the main canvas, the image with an overlay for drawing. I can click and drag and draw

drawing. I can click and drag and draw rectangles around any region. On the

sidebar, we see a list of the annotations. Each one shows the region

annotations. Each one shows the region that I selected and has a text field for my feedback. And then down here at the

my feedback. And then down here at the bottom, we have the prompt output panel, which you'll recognize in every playground. Let me draw a box around

playground. Let me draw a box around this icon here and type let's upgrade these icons to something more interesting. Now, I'll mark this here.

interesting. Now, I'll mark this here.

Add a mouse over showing the actual tools here. Okay, watch the prompt

tools here. Okay, watch the prompt output. It structures all of my feedback

output. It structures all of my feedback annotated with the position on the screen organized like an actual instruction that we can now copy and

paste back into Claude or add it to a GitHub issue if we prefer that. I didn't

describe where anything was. I pointed

at it. You can of course combine this with voice as well. And you can expand and add more functionality to your playground. The playground captured my

playground. The playground captured my feedback and translated it into locationare instructions. Of course,

locationare instructions. Of course, this is a bit of a simplified example, but yeah, you could actually build anything with the help of Claude and playgrounds. So, Claude actually built

playgrounds. So, Claude actually built me an interface to give feedback that I couldn't easily give just through words.

I pointed, I commented, and the playground translated that into a prompt that Claude can act on. This pairs

beautifully with image generation like we saw in the nana banana example. But

this way of working applies to so many things. Generate a mockup, load it into

things. Generate a mockup, load it into an annotation playground, point at what needs to change, copy the prompt back, visual output, visual feedback, and a refined prompt. The cool thing now is

refined prompt. The cool thing now is that we can give feedback and ask for more features in our playground. Tweak

it and tune it. And once we're happy with it, we simply ask Claude to turn this into a reusable playground scale for us.

[music] Okay, let's try one last build. I think

this one is very cool as it's quite unexpected. Create a concept map

unexpected. Create a concept map playground for understanding the Claude code plug-in system. include concepts

like plugins, skills, agents, hooks, MCB servers, marketplaces, and how they relate to each other. Do proper research in the official docs before you build the playground.

This uses the concept map template and it's built on a canvas element with actual physics simulation. The canvas

area here shows nodes that you can drag around connected by labeled edges showing relationships. Plugins contain

showing relationships. Plugins contain skills. Skills uses skill files, hooks,

skills. Skills uses skill files, hooks, trigger, tool use, and so on. On the

sidebar, each concept has a knowledge level toggle that cycles through three states. The green one, no, I understand

states. The green one, no, I understand this. Amber, fussy, I've heard about it,

this. Amber, fussy, I've heard about it, but I'm not confident. Red one, unknown.

This is new to me. Now, let me drag these around to organize them. Let's

mark plugins and skills. We know those hooks. Okay, let's put that as unknown.

hooks. Okay, let's put that as unknown.

Now, look at the prompt output. Now, we

have a targeted learning prompt. Instead

of saying, explain the plug-in system and getting generic overview, you've told Claude exactly what you know, what you're shaky on, and what's brand new.

The response you get back is going to be far more useful. There's nothing

stopping you from also asking it to create an interactive learning playground on the back of that feedback.

I guess it's fair to say that this isn't a prompt helper. It's a knowledge state capture tool. You're telling Claude

capture tool. You're telling Claude exactly where you are and it generates a prompt that meets you there. There are

so many use cases you can apply to something like this, such as scope mapping a new project, decomposing tasks, mapping out API surfaces you need to learn, and so on. If you're lost for

inspiration, just ask Claude, "What are 10 brilliant playgrounds we could build together?

I briefly mentioned the six templates already, but let me walk you through them quickly. The design playground

them quickly. The design playground provides sliders for UI component configuration spacing color typography, shadows. is great for

typography, shadows. is great for exploring design direction quickly without describing them all in words.

The data explorer makes it easy to build queries for SQL APIs, reg x pipelines and so on. You construct queries visually and it generates the specification for you. Then you have the

document critique template. Here you can paste in a document and get a review interface with line by line suggestions like we used for the claude MD file.

Each suggestion gets approved, reject, or comment buttons, and the prompt output only includes your approved suggestions and comments. It's great for reviewing specs, readme files, or skill

files or cloud MD files. Then we have the diff review template. It's the same idea, but for code diffs. It renders a proper diff view with green red line highlighting and you can add inline

comments on any line, outputs a structured code review prompt. It's

really useful for reviewing commits or pull requests visually before writing feedback. Then finally, there's a code

feedback. Then finally, there's a code map template. This is an SVG based

map template. This is an SVG based architecture diagram. Nodes represent

architecture diagram. Nodes represent components with file paths. Edges show

relationships like data flow, tool calls, and dependencies. You click

components to add annotations. The

prompt output includes your comments with full context. Think of it as a visual way to annotate and discuss architecture. All six follow the same

architecture. All six follow the same core pattern. Controls, live preview,

core pattern. Controls, live preview, prompt output, and a copy button.

A few things that I've learned using this plugin so far. One, you can customize any playground after it's generated. It's just an HTML file. If

generated. It's just an HTML file. If

you want to add more controls, tweak the layout, or change the dark theme, just ask Claude to modify the file. And a pro tip is you can also combine it with the

front-end design skill to make it even more awesome. Two, presets are your

more awesome. Two, presets are your friend. Where relevant, playground

friend. Where relevant, playground typically generates three to five named presets. If not, you can ask for it

presets. If not, you can ask for it explicitly. Start by clicking through

explicitly. Start by clicking through those before you touch individual controls. Often one preset gets you 80%

controls. Often one preset gets you 80% there. Number three, the prompt output

there. Number three, the prompt output is designed to be context complete. You

can paste it into a completely different cloud session and it should make sense.

Four, the concept map template uses force directed layout, a physics simulation. You can hit the auto layout

simulation. You can hit the auto layout button if your nodes get tangled up. It

will snap them back into a readable arrangement. Five, if none of the six

arrangement. Five, if none of the six templates fit your use case exactly, just ask Claude to create a playground anyway. The skill will pick the closest

anyway. The skill will pick the closest template and adapt. Six playgrounds work beautifully with visual outputs from other tools like the Nana Banana example. Think about what that unlocks.

example. Think about what that unlocks.

Visual feedback on visual output. All

right, there you have it. The playground

plugin is an official anthropic based plug-in that generates interactive self-contained HTML tools. Every

playground follows the same pattern controls, live preview, prompt output in a single HTML file with zero dependencies. Playgrounds are just HTML

dependencies. Playgrounds are just HTML files, fully portable, sharable, and modifiable. The real shift here isn't

modifiable. The real shift here isn't better prompts. It's a new interaction

better prompts. It's a new interaction loop. Claude builds an interface

loop. Claude builds an interface tailored to your task. You give feedback through it. Clicks, sliders, approvals.

through it. Clicks, sliders, approvals.

The playground translates that back into instructions that Claude understands.

Visual in, text out. I hope you found this video helpful. Like and subscribe for more Claude Code videos. And do drop me a comment below about what cool use

cases you've found for playgrounds.