M5Stack skills for Claude Code

A plugin marketplace of hardware-reference skills for developing firmware on M5Stack Controllers, plus chip-level references for the Espressif SoCs they run on.

Each skill is a set of instructions Claude loads on demand: what's wired to which GPIO, which chip answers at which I2C address, which library to reach for, and the specific gotchas that make bring-up code fail. The skills are written to be used while coding, not read as documentation.

Install

claude plugin marketplace add iot-forge/m5stack-skills

Then install only what the machine's hardware needs:

# Working on a Cardputer Adv
claude plugin install cardputer@m5stack
claude plugin install esp32-chips@m5stack

# Working on a Core2 or Tab5
claude plugin install core@m5stack
claude plugin install esp32-chips@m5stack

You can also do this interactively from inside Claude Code with /plugin.

After installing into a running session, run /reload-plugins

Installing a plugin into a session that was already open lands the files on disk but doesn't activate them — Claude won't see the new skills until the session reloads its plugin catalog. Check the install summary: if it says Run /reload-plugins to activate., run that command inside Claude Code. It reloads plugins, skills, agents, hooks, and plugin MCP/LSP servers without restarting.

> claude plugin install core@m5stack
Installed core@m5stack. Run /reload-plugins to activate.
> /reload-plugins

Sessions launched after the install (whether claude or claude -c) pick the new plugin up at startup — no reload needed. It's specifically the mid-session install that requires it.

If /reload-plugins warns about re-reading the current conversation, rerun as /reload-plugins --force. Note that the reload summary's skills count only counts commands/ directories, so it can report 0 skills even when your skill did load — verify by asking a real hardware question and watching whether the matching skill triggers, or checking /plugin for the enabled state.

Sources: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins · https://code.claude.com/docs/en/discover-plugins

Install esp32-chips alongside any board plugin. The board skills deliberately don't repeat chip-level content (peripherals, sleep modes, PSRAM config, USB controllers, radio coexistence) — they point into the chip skills for it. Without esp32-chips, questions that go past a board's own wiring fall back to whatever Claude already knows.

Update

Two different things update, and they're separate steps:

# 1. refresh the catalog — picks up plugins added since you last looked
claude plugin marketplace update m5stack

# 2. update the plugins you already have installed
claude plugin update cardputer@m5stack
claude plugin update esp32-chips@m5stack

Or /plugin marketplace update then /plugin update inside a session. Claude Code also refreshes marketplaces in the background, so step 1 often happens on its own — step 2 is what actually pulls new skill content onto your machine.

Run /reload-plugins after plugin update, same as after install into a running session. The new skill content is on disk immediately, but the running session keeps the previously-loaded catalog until the reload runs. No restart needed.

New plugins are never installed automatically. When a new board family lands here, marketplace update makes it visible, and you install it explicitly:

claude plugin marketplace update m5stack
claude plugin list --available        # see what's new
claude plugin install stick@m5stack   # opt in

That's deliberate — you shouldn't get StickC skill descriptions in your context budget because we published a StickC plugin.

What's here

cardputer@m5stack

Skill	Covers
m5stack-cardputer-adv	Cardputer Adv (K132-Adv) — ESP32-S3, TCA8418 keyboard, BMI270 IMU, ES8311 codec, ST7789V2 display. Includes a Cardputer-vs-Cardputer-Adv difference table, since the two boards share an enclosure but not their keyboard or audio hardware.

core@m5stack

Skill	Covers
m5stack-core2	Core2 family — plain Core2 (v1.0/v1.1, v1.3) and Core2 For AWS (base, v1.3), folded into one skill with a hardware-revisions table. AXP192 power management, ILI9342C + FT6336U display/touch, BM8563 RTC, the MPU6886-vs-BMI270 IMU split, and the ATECC608B secure element / AWS IoT certificate-registration gotcha.
m5stack-tab5	Tab5 (C145) — ESP32-P4 main SoC with an ESP32-C6 radio co-processor over SDIO. MIPI-DSI display, MIPI-CSI camera, ES8388/ES7210 audio, RS485, IO expanders, and the WiFi.setPins() requirement that catches everyone.

esp32-chips@m5stack

Skill	Covers
esp32	Classic ESP32 (Xtensa LX6) — the D0WDQ6/D0WD/D0WDR2 die family, WROOM vs WROVER modules, the ADC2-vs-WiFi conflict, Bluetooth Classic, ULP-FSM, hibernation, and what the "-V3" revision changed.
esp32-s3	ESP32-S3 (Xtensa LX7) — RMT/LEDC/I2S/PCNT/MCPWM/TWAI, native USB OTG vs USB-Serial-JTAG, ULP-FSM vs ULP-RISC-V, octal/quad PSRAM, dual-core task pinning, WiFi/BLE coexistence, SIMD for on-device AI.
esp32-c6	ESP32-C6 (RISC-V) — WiFi 6 + BLE 5.3 + Thread/Zigbee sharing one antenna and what that costs, the LP core as a real coprocessor, dual TWAI controllers, SD-SPI-only storage, and why there's no PSRAM.
esp32-p4	ESP32-P4 (RISC-V) — no radio at all, MIPI-CSI/DSI with the integrated ISP, hardware JPEG and H.264 encode, PPA/2D-DMA, three USB controllers including real High-Speed OTG, and the PIE AI/DSP extensions.

Also pin it into a firmware repo

Installing a plugin makes it available on your machine. To make it available to anyone who clones a specific firmware repo — and to cloud sessions, which don't inherit your personal settings — declare it in that repo's .claude/settings.json:

{
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": {
    "m5stack": {
      "source": {
        "source": "github",
        "repo": "iot-forge/m5stack-skills"
      }
    }
  },
  "enabledPlugins": {
    "cardputer@m5stack": true,
    "esp32-chips@m5stack": true
  }
}

Marketplace for the machine, repo declaration for the project.

Why plugins are split by board family

Every enabled skill's name and description sits in the context window of every session. Splitting by board family means a machine that only ever touches a Cardputer loads five skill descriptions instead of the whole catalog, and the references/ files inside each skill stay unread — and therefore free — until Claude actually needs one.

The chip skills are their own plugin because a handful of SoCs cover the entire M5Stack Controller lineup. Writing that content once and having every board skill link into it beats maintaining five drifting copies of the same ESP32-S3 peripheral notes.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the skill layout convention, where build notes live, and how to add a new board.

Accuracy

These skills were built from M5Stack's official product docs and schematics, Espressif's datasheets and ESP-IDF docs, and — where official sources were silent — community writeups, which are flagged as such inline. Anything unverified is marked unverified rather than smoothed over.

M5Stack revises boards and library APIs move. If something here contradicts what your hardware actually does, the hardware is right; please open an issue.

License

MIT.