mattpocock / skills

# Skills For Real Engineers
My agent skills that I use every day to do real engineering - not vibe coding.
Developing 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.
These 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.
If 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:
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## Installation (30-second setup)
A plugin updates itself. skills.sh copies editable files into your project, and you update them by hand. Pick one per agent, because installing both gives you every skill twice.
### 1. Get the skills
 Claude Code 
 [code] 
Updates itself by default.
 Codex 
 [code] 
Updates itself at startup.
 GitHub Copilot (CLI and VS Code) 
 [code] 
Then, once, add to `~/.copilot/settings.json`:
 [code] 
In VS Code, run **Chat: Install Plugin From Source** and enter `https://github.com/mattpocock/skills`. It updates daily.
 Gemini CLI (manual updates) 
 [code] 
Re-run both commands to update.
 Any other agent, or editable files (manual updates) 
 [code] 
When the installer asks which skills to take, include `setup-matt-pocock-skills`. To update, run `npx skills@latest update`, and re-run `add` to pick up new skills.
### 2. Run `/setup-matt-pocock-skills`
In your agent, run it once per repo. It will:
- Ask you which issue tracker you want to use (GitHub, GitLab, local files, or anything else you describe)
- Ask you what labels you apply to tickets when you triage them (`/triage` uses labels)
- Ask you where you want to save any docs we create
### 3. Bam - you're ready to go.
## Why These Skills Exist
I built these skills as a way to fix common failure modes I see with Claude Code, Codex, and other coding agents.
### #1: The Agent Didn't Do What I Want
> "No-one knows exactly what they want"
>
> David Thomas & Andrew Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer
**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 all.
This is just the same in the AI age. There is a communication gap between you and the agent. The fix for this is a **grilling session** - getting the agent to ask you detailed questions about what you're building.
**The Fix** is to use:
- `/grill-me` - for non-code uses
- `/grill-with-docs` - same as `/grill-me`, but adds more goodies (see below)
These are my most popular skills. They help you align with the agent before you get started, and think deeply about the change you're making. Use them _every_ time you want to make a change.
### #2: The Agent Is Way Too Verbose
> With a ubiquitous language, conversations among develo