Skills for real engineers by Matt Pocock
Skills For Real Engineers
Small composable skills for engineering with agents: plan grilling, TDD, bug diagnosis, code review and architecture
- 306,265 ★ on the repository
- Last commit
- MIT
Minimal access
Why this level
- Skills are markdown instructions
- Some skills publish issues to your tracker and create commits
Install
- Works in
In your terminal, with SkillFoxx CLI
npx skillfoxx add skills/skills-for-real-engineersDetects the agents on your machine, shows the access level and pins the version.
Other ways to install
Access and checks
How we reviewMinimal accessThe tool runs nothing and makes no network calls.
- Skills are markdown instructions
- Some skills publish issues to your tracker and create commits
This is third-party code. Review the repository files before installing.
What it does
A set of skills aimed at common failure modes with coding agents. grill-me and grill-with-docs run a detailed interview before a change and maintain CONTEXT.md with shared vocabulary and ADRs. tdd drives a red-green-refactor loop, diagnosing-bugs enforces a debugging discipline, and improve-codebase-architecture surveys the codebase for deepening opportunities. There are also skills for specs, tickets, code review, merge conflicts and handing off context to another agent.
Who it is for. Developers who want to keep control over process and code quality when working with an agent.
Good fit when
- You need to align with the agent before a significant change
- You want the agent to work test-first
- You are chasing a hard bug or performance regression
- You need to break a spec into tickets in GitHub, Linear or local files
Not a fit when
- You want a framework that owns the whole process for you
- Small one-off edits where an interview is overkill
Example request
/grill-with-docs I want to add multi-account support, grill me and update CONTEXT.mdLimitations
Run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo before using the engineering skills. Do not install both the plugin and the skills.sh copy, or every skill appears twice. A native Codex plugin is still on the roadmap.
How to disable. Uninstall the mattpocock-skills plugin via /plugin in Claude Code, or delete the copied skill files from your repo.
FAQ
Plugin or skills.sh?
The plugin installs a read-only bundle that updates automatically; skills.sh copies editable files into your project.
What does the setup skill ask?
Which issue tracker to use (GitHub, Linear or local files), which triage labels you apply, and where to save docs.
Discussion
No questions or reviews yet.
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Comparison with similar tools
Entries that share the main search query, and how they differ.
| Entry | Official | Repository stars | Main difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills for real engineers by Matt Pocock (this entry) | no | 306,265 | |
| grill-me: plan interview skill | no | 1,232 | a Claude Code skill |
| Agent Stuff | no | 3,202 | armin's personal toolkit for the Pi Coding Agent |
| vibe-check: from an app idea to a build plan | no | 629 | a skill that takes a beginner from a vague app idea to a validated |
README in short
Matt Pocock publishes the skills he uses daily as a lighter alternative to process frameworks like GSD, BMAD and Spec-Kit. The README walks through four problems: the agent misunderstood, the agent is verbose, the code does not work, the codebase turns into a ball of mud, and maps skills to each. Skills are split into engineering and productivity, and into user-invoked and model-invoked. Install via the Claude Code plugin or npx skills.
README badge
Original SKILL.md
--- name: grill-me description: A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design. disable-model-invocation: true --- Call the Skill tool with "grilling".