Inspired by mattpocock/skills.
Source: mattpocock/skillsReverse-engineered from real GitHub workflow.
Skills for Real Engineers. Straight from my .claude directory.
Create reusable agent skills and workflows to improve coding agent alignment, requirements clarity, and software engineering processes.
I want you to create a collection of reusable agent skills - basically specialized prompts and workflows that help coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor work better on real engineering tasks. Think of these as battle-tested templates that solve common failure modes engineers encounter when working with AI.
The core idea is that agents often misunderstand what you actually want, skip important details, or approach problems in ways that create technical debt. So you're building a library of skills that guide agents through better processes. Each skill should be a self-contained workflow that's easy to understand, adapt, and compose with other skills.
Start with the foundational structure: create a skills directory where each skill lives in its own folder with clear documentation. Each skill needs a SKILL.md file explaining what problem it solves, how to use it, and what it does. Think of skills as mini-processes - not rigid scripts, but flexible approaches that work across different models and coding agents.
Build at least a few core skills that address real pain points:
- A "grilling" skill that forces agents to ask clarifying questions before coding, so they understand requirements deeply
- A skill for working with documentation and specs to ensure agents actually read and follow them
- A skill for triaging and breaking down work into manageable pieces
- A skill for handling git operations and version control properly
Make the installation system work via npm/npx so people can easily add these skills to their agent setup. Create a setup workflow that asks users where they want to save docs, which issue tracker they use (GitHub/Linear/local files), and which skills they want. The setup should be fast - under 30 seconds from install to usable.
Keep everything shell-scriptable and composable. These skills should work with any coding agent, not just one platform. Focus on the process and philosophy rather than implementation details - the goal is helping engineers ship quality code by improving communication and preventing common mistakes. Make it opinionated but flexible enough that people can hack and customize it for their workflow.