mattpocock/skills — Agent Skills for Real Engineers
Matt Pocock's daily-driver agent skills for Claude Code and Codex: /grill-me to align on intent, /tdd red-green-refactor, /code-review, /diagnosing-bugs. MIT-licensed, one command to install.
These are Matt Pocock's (Total TypeScript) agent skills, lifted straight out of his own .agents directory — subtitled "skills for real engineers, not vibe coding." His argument: frameworks like GSD, BMAD and Spec-Kit help by owning the process, but in doing so they take away your control and make bugs in the process hard to resolve. So these are deliberately small, easy to adapt, composable, and model-agnostic.
The repo is organized around four failure modes. (1) The agent didn't do what I want — /grill-me and /grill-with-docs interrogate you before any code is written, until every branch of the design tree is resolved; these are the repo's most popular skills. (2) The agent is too verbose — build a shared language in CONTEXT.md ("the materialization cascade" beats a whole sentence of explanation), which also makes naming consistent and cuts thinking tokens. (3) The code doesn't work — /tdd enforces red-green-refactor, /diagnosing-bugs wraps debugging into a phase-gated loop. (4) We built a ball of mud — /to-spec quizzes you on which modules you're touching, and /improve-codebase-architecture surveys the codebase for deepening opportunities and hands you the candidates (a survey, not a rescue).
Skills split on who can invoke them. User-invoked ones fire only when you type them and exist to orchestrate: /ask-matt, /triage, /to-tickets, /implement, /wayfinder. Model-invoked ones can also be reached for by the agent when the task fits, and hold the reusable discipline: /tdd, /codebase-design, /code-review, /research, /writing-for-agents. Alongside engineering there's a productivity set — /handoff to compact a session for the next agent, /teach for multi-session learning, /wait-what to re-pitch anything that didn't land in your own project's vocabulary.
Two install paths, two philosophies. The Claude Code plugin (`claude plugins install mattpocock-skills`) is a managed, read-only bundle that updates when he ships — you subscribe. `npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills` copies editable files into your repo — you fork and hack. Don't do both, or you get every skill twice. Then run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo to pick your issue tracker (GitHub, Linear, or local files), triage labels, and where docs go. Best for engineers maintaining real codebases who are tired of agents accelerating entropy.
FAQ
What is mattpocock/skills?
Matt Pocock's own agent skills, straight from his .agents directory: requirement grilling, TDD, code review, bug diagnosis, and architecture surveys. Deliberately small, easy to adapt, composable, and model-agnostic.
How do I install it?
Two ways: in Claude Code run `claude plugins install mattpocock-skills` (it's in the official marketplace; read-only, auto-updating), or for Codex and other agents run `npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills`, which writes editable files into your repo. Don't install both. Then run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo.
Is it free? What license?
Free and MIT-licensed (© 2026 Matt Pocock), so you can modify and use it commercially. The repo currently sits at roughly 234k stars and 20k forks.
How is this different from BMAD or Spec-Kit?
Pocock's view is that GSD, BMAD and Spec-Kit help by owning the process — but that costs you control and makes process bugs hard to debug. These skills go the other way: each is small enough to rewrite, adopt piecemeal, or compose into your own workflow.
Which skill should I try first?
He names /grill-me and /grill-with-docs as the most popular: they interrogate you before any code is written until every branch of the design tree is resolved. /grill-with-docs also maintains a shared project language in CONTEXT.md plus ADRs — which he calls possibly the coolest technique in the repo.