claudekit / tools / mattpocock-skills
[ Skill · Development ]

Matt Pocock's Skills

Skills For Real Engineers. Straight from Matt Pocock's .claude directory. 20+ agent skills for real engineering — not vibe coding — covering alignment (grilling), specs, TDD, code review, bug diagnosis, and architecture. Install as an editable fork via skills.sh or as a read-only plugin bundle.

mattpocock/skills ·updated
$ npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills copy

An open-source skill collection by Matt Pocock (mattpocock/skills).

What it does

When you hand work to a coding agent, the ways it goes wrong follow a pattern. Matt Pocock frames them as four failure modes — misalignment before you start, verbosity from having no shared project language, non-functional code from working without feedback loops like types and tests, and complex architecture as agents accelerate software entropy.

This repo is the set of skills he uses to address those failure modes. From the README: “agent skills that I use every day to do real engineering - not vibe coding.” They package a real engineering workflow as skills rather than one-off prompting.

What you can do

The repo’s 20+ skills split into engineering and productivity, per the README:

  • Alignment and domain modeling — grill-me, grill-with-docs, and domain-modeling interrogate decisions up front and capture the project domain model in CONTEXT.md
  • Spec to implementation — to-spec (conversation into a spec), to-tickets (plans into tracer-bullet tickets), implement (build from spec/tickets, running TDD and code review before commit), wayfinder (plan large multi-session work)
  • Quality and diagnosis — tdd (red-green-refactor), diagnosing-bugs (reproduce → minimize → hypothesize → instrument → fix), code-review (two-axis Standards vs Spec as parallel sub-agents), improve-codebase-architecture (design scan as an HTML report), resolving-merge-conflicts
  • Productivity — handoff (compact a conversation into a handoff document), teach (teach a concept over multiple sessions), research (investigate against primary sources), prototype (throwaway prototype for design questions)

Not sure where to start? ask-matt is a router skill that identifies which skill fits your situation.

Key features

  • Grilling-based alignment

    grill-me and grill-with-docs interview you about a plan or design until the decision branches resolve, aligning with the agent before work starts. A reusable grilling loop underlies both.

  • Spec-to-implementation pipeline

    to-spec → to-tickets → implement turns a conversation into a spec and tickets, then builds it while running TDD and code review before commit.

  • Disciplined quality loops

    tdd’s red-green-refactor, diagnosing-bugs’ reproduce-to-fix loop, and code-review’s two-axis parallel review keep output quality consistent.

  • Editable fork or read-only bundle

    Install via skills.sh to copy the skills into your repo and edit them, or install the plugin as an auto-updating, read-only bundle.

Usage

Install (editable) — copy the skills into your repo with skills.sh. You choose which skills and which agents to install them on.

npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills

Install (read-only plugin) — add the marketplace and install the plugin.

/plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills
/plugin install mattpocock-skills@mattpocock

Setup — after installing, run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once to configure your issue tracker (GitHub, Linear, or local files), label conventions, and where generated docs are saved.

Notes

  • Setup step required — both install methods need /setup-matt-pocock-skills run once per repo.
  • Two install models — skills.sh gives you an editable copy; the plugin gives you an auto-updating, read-only bundle.
  • MIT License — published as open source.
§ 6

See also

same category · curated
[01]
[Tool] Orca · Orca is the ADE for working with a fleet of parallel agents. Run any coding agent with your own subscription. It runs each agent in an isolated git worktree, lets you compare outputs side by side, and merge the ones you want. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Grok, and 30+ CLI agents. Available on desktop and mobile.
tool · claudekit.io / tools / orca
[02]
[Plugin] gstack · Garry Tan's (YC CEO) exact Claude Code setup, packaged as slash commands. Call up roles like CEO, Designer, Eng Manager, QA, and Release Manager in sequence so a solo builder can work like a team.
tool · claudekit.io / tools / gstack
[03]
[MCP] PayPal · PayPal's official remote MCP server and open-source Agent Toolkit. Create invoices, orders, payments, refunds, subscriptions, and handle disputes from Claude Code.
tool · claudekit.io / tools / paypal
§ 7

Frequently Asked Questions

frequently asked
§ 7.1
What is Matt Pocock's Skills?
A collection of Claude Code skills Matt Pocock uses every day, straight from his .claude directory. As the README puts it, "Skills For Real Engineers." It bundles 20+ skills for alignment, specs, TDD, code review, and bug diagnosis — real engineering, not vibe coding.
§ 7.2
What does it run on?
It's designed for Claude Code with native plugin support, and it's also compatible with Codex and other Agent-Skills-standard harnesses.
§ 7.3
How do I install it?
Two ways. Run `npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills` to copy editable skill files into your repo, or run `/plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills` then `/plugin install mattpocock-skills@mattpocock` for a read-only bundle. Either way, run `/setup-matt-pocock-skills` once afterward.
§ 7.4
What's the difference between the skills.sh install and the plugin install?
skills.sh (`npx skills`) copies the skill files into your repo so you can hack on them and make them your own. The plugin installs them as a read-only, always-current bundle you don't edit.
§ 7.5
Is it free? What's the license?
Yes, it's open source under the MIT License. The agents that run the skills, such as Claude Code, are billed separately.