Skills mattpocock skills

Engineering workflow Bundle of 24 skills

Use it when:
You want the agent to agree with you on what to build before it codes, then build it in small tested steps.
It does:
Interviews you about a change, writes a spec and tickets on your issue tracker, builds each ticket test-first, then reviews the diff.
You get:
A project glossary and decision records, a spec and ordered tickets, tested commits, a review against your standards and the spec, and ideas for next time.
Needs:
A code repo, and one run of the setup skill there to record your issue tracker: GitHub, GitLab, local Markdown files or another.
Runs:
Each main step only when you type it; supporting skills, such as the test-first and review ones, the agent can also start by itself.
Unlike process frameworks:
Those own the whole process; here each step is a small skill you call yourself and can edit.
Also covers:
Triaging incoming issues, debugging hard bugs, planning work too big for one session, and finding refactors that simplify a codebase.
Start with:
ask-matt, a skill that maps the others and points you to the one that fits.

TL;DR

Matt Pocock, a TypeScript teacher, built these skills to keep coding agents aligned with what you want and their code small and tested. A one-time setup skill records which issue tracker the repo uses and what its triage labels are called. The flow then starts with an interview: the agent asks about the change in numbered rounds, each question with its recommended answer, until no decision is left open, and writes the project's terms to a glossary and hard-to-reverse choices to architecture decision records as you go. Questions that talk can't answer go to a throwaway prototype or a background research agent. Next, the conversation becomes a spec on the tracker, then tickets: thin slices that each work end to end and list the tickets that must land first. The build step takes one ticket at a time, test-first, and ends with a review that checks the diff against your coding standards and, separately, against the spec; another skill builds a whole spec at once with parallel subagents. Finally, a retrospective proposes new checks, coding standards or agent instructions so the next run goes better.

Summarizes the repo at 5beb35b. Its skills have changed by 298 words since.

Any agent, with the skills CLI

npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill setup-matt-pocock-skills --skill ask-matt --skill grill-with-docs --skill grill-me --skill grilling --skill domain-modeling --skill research --skill handoff --skill prototype --skill wayfinder --skill to-spec --skill to-tickets --skill triage --skill implement --skill implement-spec --skill tdd --skill codebase-design --skill code-review --skill diagnosing-bugs --skill retro --skill writing-for-agents --skill improve-codebase-architecture --skill chief-of-staff

Claude Code plugin, with 5 more of the repo's skills, without chief-of-staff

claude plugin install mattpocock-skills@claude-plugins-official

Codex plugin, with 5 more of the repo's skills, without chief-of-staff

codex plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills && codex plugin add mattpocock-skills@mattpocock

GitHub Copilot CLI plugin, with 5 more of the repo's skills, without chief-of-staff

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

Gemini CLI, with 5 more of the repo's skills, without chief-of-staff

gemini skills install https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git --path skills/engineering && gemini skills install https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git --path skills/productivity
Total Downloads
1,518,702 of grill-me, its most installed skill, on skills.sh, Nov 9, 2026
Repo stars
318,714 mattpocock/skills
First seen
Feb 10, 2026 on skills.sh, its first skill

Its skills, in the order they're used

The ones marked “Only in the bundle” need the rest of it. The others also work alone.

  1. setup-matt-pocock-skills

    Only in the bundle 1.1M total downloads

    Sets up a repo for the Matt Pocock skills: issue tracker, triage labels and domain docs.

    Writes the tracker, label and domain-doc settings under docs/agents/ that the other skills read; on its own, nothing uses them.

  2. ask-matt

    Only in the bundle 831K total downloads

    Picks the right skill or flow from the Matt Pocock bundle for your situation.

    A map of the other skills that reads each one's SKILL.md before recommending it, so it only helps once they're installed.

  3. grill-with-docs

    Only in the bundle 1.3M total downloads

    Runs the same interview and writes ADRs and a glossary as it goes.

    Its whole SKILL.md loads grilling and domain-modeling.

  4. grill-me

    Only in the bundle 1.5M total downloads

    Interviews you relentlessly to sharpen a plan or design.

    Its whole SKILL.md loads grilling.

  5. grilling

    1.1M total downloads

    Stress-tests a plan, decision or idea, one round of questions at a time.

  6. domain-modeling

    954K total downloads

    Builds and sharpens the project's domain model, CONTEXT.md and ADRs.

  7. research

    783K total downloads

    Investigates a question against primary sources and saves the findings as Markdown.

  8. handoff

    1.1M total downloads

    Compacts the conversation into a handoff document for another agent.

  9. prototype

    1.1M total downloads

    Builds a throwaway prototype to answer a design question.

  10. wayfinder

    Only in the bundle 789K total downloads

    Plans work too big for one session as a map of decision tickets.

    Resolves its decision tickets by loading grilling, domain-modeling, research and prototype, on the tracker that setup-matt-pocock-skills configures (local Markdown files without it).

  11. chief-of-staff

    Only in the bundle 119K total downloads

    Pursues a long-running goal by delegating all work to subagents, keeping memory in a wiki and improving the agents' environment as it goes.

    Runs retro, to-spec, to-tickets and implement-spec as its procedures, reading each SKILL.md by relative path, so they must be installed in the same skills folder; its specs and tickets go to the tracker setup-matt-pocock-skills configures.

  12. to-spec

    Only in the bundle 785K total downloads

    Turns the conversation into a spec on the issue tracker.

    Publishes to the issue tracker, with the ready-for-agent label, that setup-matt-pocock-skills configures.

  13. to-tickets

    Only in the bundle 782K total downloads

    Breaks a plan into tracer-bullet tickets with blocking edges.

    Publishes to the issue tracker, with the ready-for-agent label, that setup-matt-pocock-skills configures.

  14. triage

    Only in the bundle 1.1M total downloads

    Moves issues and external PRs through a triage state machine and writes agent-ready briefs.

    Needs the tracker and label mapping from setup-matt-pocock-skills, and loads grilling and domain-modeling to flesh out a request.

  15. implement

    Only in the bundle 843K total downloads

    Implements a piece of work from a spec or tickets.

    Builds through tdd and closes with code-review, loading both as steps.

  16. implement-spec

    Only in the bundle 347K total downloads

    Implements a spec through its tickets, with subagents.

    Works a spec and its tickets from to-spec and to-tickets on the configured tracker, has each subagent load tdd, and ends with code-review.

  17. tdd

    1.2M total downloads

    Guides test-first feature and bug work with a red-green-refactor loop.

  18. codebase-design

    930K total downloads

    Gives a shared vocabulary and principles for designing deep modules.

  19. code-review

    869K total downloads

    Reviews changes since a fixed point against the repo's standards and the spec.

  20. pr

    230K total downloads

    Writes pull request bodies with a visual summary, before-and-after evidence and a merge-risk call.

  21. diagnosing-bugs

    909K total downloads

    Runs a diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions.

  22. retro

    340K total downloads

    Runs a retrospective on a coding session and improves the agent's setup.

  23. writing-for-agents

    535K total downloads

    Guides writing documents for agents: skills, AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md.

  24. improve-codebase-architecture

    Only in the bundle 1.2M total downloads

    Scans a codebase for deepening opportunities, renders an HTML report, then grills through the one you pick.

    Loads codebase-design for its vocabulary, then grilling and domain-modeling to work through the refactor you pick.