Skills for Real Engineers
Bring engineering practice into agent collaboration, from clarifying requirements to implementation and verification.
Composable Skills for everyday engineering work: clarifying requirements, shaping plans, breaking down tasks, implementation, testing, and review, as well as debugging and project maintenance. This collection includes all Skills in the author's engineering, misc, and productivity groups. It excludes experimental items in in-progress and differs from the author's Claude Code plugin package.
Use cases
- Developing new features
- Diagnosing and fixing bugs
- Code review and architecture maintenance
How to use
For a project's first use, ask the agent to configure the project. Then choose requirement clarification, implementation, testing, or review for the current stage. Use ask-matt if you are unsure which Skill fits.
Skills
ask-matt
Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the skills in this repo.
mattpocock/skillscode-review
Review the changes since a fixed point (commit, branch, tag, or merge-base) along two axes: Standards (does the code follow this repo's documented coding standards?) and Spec (does the code match what the originating issue/spec asked for?). Runs both reviews in parallel sub-agents and reports them side by side. Use when the user wants to review a branch, a PR, work-in-progress changes, or asks to "review since X".
mattpocock/skillscodebase-design
Shared vocabulary for designing deep modules. Use when the user wants to design or improve a module's interface, find deepening opportunities, decide where a seam goes, make code more testable or AI-navigable, or when another skill needs the deep-module vocabulary.
mattpocock/skillsdiagnosing-bugs
Diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions. Use when the user says "diagnose"/"debug this", or reports something broken/throwing/failing/slow.
mattpocock/skillsdomain-modeling
Build and sharpen a project's domain model. Use when discussing codebase terminology, writing or editing a GLOSSARY.md, or recording or editing an ADR.
mattpocock/skillsgrill-with-docs
A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design, which also creates docs (ADR's and glossary) as we go.
mattpocock/skillsimplement-spec
Implement the result of /to-spec and /to-tickets in code.
mattpocock/skillsimplement
Implement a piece of work based on a spec or set of tickets.
mattpocock/skillsimprove-codebase-architecture
Scan a codebase for deepening opportunities, present them as a visual HTML report, then grill through whichever one you pick.
mattpocock/skillspr
Use when writing a PR body.
mattpocock/skillsprototype
Build a throwaway prototype to answer a design question. Use when the user wants to sanity-check whether a state model or logic feels right, or explore what a UI should look like.
mattpocock/skillsresearch
Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.
mattpocock/skillsretro
Conduct a retrospective on a coding session.
mattpocock/skillssetup-matt-pocock-skills
Configure this repo for the engineering skills: set up its issue tracker, triage label vocabulary, and domain doc layout. Run once before first use of the other engineering skills.
mattpocock/skillstdd
Test-driven development. Use when the user wants to build features or fix bugs test-first, mentions "red-green-refactor", or wants integration tests.
mattpocock/skillsto-spec
Turn the current conversation into a spec and publish it to the project issue tracker: no interview, just synthesis of what you've already discussed.
mattpocock/skillsto-tickets
Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker (edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker).
mattpocock/skillstriage
Move issues and external PRs through a state machine of triage roles, categorise, verify, grill if needed, and write agent-ready briefs.
mattpocock/skillswayfinder
Plan a huge chunk of work (more than one agent session can hold) as a shared map of decision tickets on your issue tracker, and resolve them one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.
mattpocock/skillswizard
Generate an interactive bash wizard that walks a human through steps only they can perform. Use when provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, walking an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, or running a one-off migration or cutover. Don't invoke this for steps the agent can perform itself.
mattpocock/skillsgit-guardrails-claude-code
Set up Claude Code hooks to block dangerous git commands (push, reset --hard, clean, branch -D, etc.) before they execute. Use when user wants to prevent destructive git operations, add git safety hooks, or block git push/reset in Claude Code.
mattpocock/skillsmigrate-to-shoehorn
Migrate test files from `as` type assertions to @total-typescript/shoehorn. Use when user mentions shoehorn, wants to replace `as` in tests, or needs partial test data.
mattpocock/skillsscaffold-exercises
Create exercise directory structures with sections, problems, solutions, and explainers that pass linting. Use when user wants to scaffold exercises, create exercise stubs, or set up a new course section.
mattpocock/skillssetup-pre-commit
Set up Husky pre-commit hooks with lint-staged (Prettier), type checking, and tests in the current repo. Use when user wants to add pre-commit hooks, set up Husky, configure lint-staged, or add commit-time formatting/typechecking/testing.
mattpocock/skillsgrill-me
A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design.
mattpocock/skillsgrilling
Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
mattpocock/skillshandoff
Compact the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up.
mattpocock/skillsteach
Teach the user a new skill or concept, within this workspace.
mattpocock/skillsto-questionnaire
Turn a decision you can't fully answer into a questionnaire for someone else to fill in.
mattpocock/skillswait-what
Stop. That last message did not land: re-pitch it.
mattpocock/skillswriting-for-agents
Writing documents for agents. Use when creating or editing skills, or modifying AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.
mattpocock/skills