skills
CLI Toolmattpocock/skills
Collection of AI agent skills for real software engineering.
Overview
A set of small, composable skills for coding agents like Claude Code. They address common failure modes such as misalignment, verbosity, and code quality. Includes skills for grilling, TDD, diagnosis, and architecture improvement.
README Preview
\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n\n# Skills For Real Engineers\n\n[](https://skills.sh/mattpocock/skills)\n\nMy agent skills that I use every day to do real engineering - not vibe coding.\n\nDeveloping real applications is hard. Approaches like GSD, BMAD, and Spec-Kit try to help by owning the process. But while doing so, they take away your control and make bugs in the process hard to resolve.\n\nThese skills are designed to be small, easy to adapt, and composable. They work with any model. They're based on decades of engineering experience. Hack around with them. Make them your own. Enjoy.\n\nIf you want to keep up with changes to these skills, and any new ones I create, you can join ~60,000 other devs on my newsletter:\n\n[Sign Up To The Newsletter](https://www.aihero.dev/s/skills-newsletter)\n\n## Quickstart (30-second setup)\n\n1. Run the skills.sh installer:\n\n```bash\nnpx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills\n```\n\n2. Pick the skills you want, and which coding agents you want to install them on. **Make sure you select `/setup-matt-pocock-skills`**.\n\n3. Run `/setup-matt-pocock-skills` in your agent. It will:\n - Ask you which issue tracker you want to use (GitHub, Linear, or local files)\n - Ask you what labels you apply to ticks when you triage them (`/triage` uses labels)\n - Ask you where you want to save any docs we create\n\n4. Bam - you're ready to go.\n\n## Why These Skills Exist\n\nI built these skills as a way to fix common failure modes I see with Claude Code, Codex, and other coding agents.\n\n### #1: The Agent Didn't Do What I Want\n\n> "No-one knows exactly what they want"\n>\n> David Thomas & Andrew Hunt, [The Pragmatic Programmer](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pragmatic-Programmer-Anniversary-Journey-Mastery/dp/B0833F1T3V)\n\n**The Problem**. The most common failure mode in software development is misalignment. You think the dev knows what you want. Then you see what they've built - and you realize it didn't understand you at
FAQ (2)
TroubleshootingHow to make the AI assistant use my project's ubiquitous language during conversations?
The ubiquitous language skill is now integrated into the /grill-me-docs command. Run that command to align the AI with your terminology. To build a CONTEXT.md file with project terms, use /grill-with-docs iteratively.
TroubleshootingHow to fix 'readlink: illegal option -- f' error when running link-skills.sh on macOS?
This happens because link-skills.sh uses GNU readlink -f, unavailable on macOS. Workarounds: 1) Use the idempotent install/symlink script from smileart's gist: https://gist.github.com/smileart/b94dbf685e29aea8fff78a481d757775. 2) Install GNU coreutils (brew install coreutils) and replace readlink with greadlink in the script. 3) Apply the POSIX symlink-resolution patch from MackDing's fork: https://github.com/MackDing/skills/tree/fix/link-skills-macos-portable.