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-officialCodex 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 Source on GitHubAll skills from mattpocock/skills
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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Runs the same interview and writes ADRs and a glossary as it goes.
Its whole SKILL.md loads grilling and domain-modeling.
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Interviews you relentlessly to sharpen a plan or design.
Its whole SKILL.md loads grilling.
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grilling
1.1M total downloadsStress-tests a plan, decision or idea, one round of questions at a time.
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domain-modeling
954K total downloadsBuilds and sharpens the project's domain model, CONTEXT.md and ADRs.
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research
783K total downloadsInvestigates a question against primary sources and saves the findings as Markdown.
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handoff
1.1M total downloadsCompacts the conversation into a handoff document for another agent.
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prototype
1.1M total downloadsBuilds a throwaway prototype to answer a design question.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Implements a piece of work from a spec or tickets.
Builds through tdd and closes with code-review, loading both as steps.
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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.
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tdd
1.2M total downloadsGuides test-first feature and bug work with a red-green-refactor loop.
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codebase-design
930K total downloadsGives a shared vocabulary and principles for designing deep modules.
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code-review
869K total downloadsReviews changes since a fixed point against the repo's standards and the spec.
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pr
230K total downloadsWrites pull request bodies with a visual summary, before-and-after evidence and a merge-risk call.
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diagnosing-bugs
909K total downloadsRuns a diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions.
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retro
340K total downloadsRuns a retrospective on a coding session and improves the agent's setup.
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writing-for-agents
535K total downloadsGuides writing documents for agents: skills, AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md.
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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.