grill-me skill by Matt Pocock
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 23 agent skills by recommenders
Makes the AI question your plan until you both agree on the design, so it builds what you expect. Critics say it still scope creeps and can produce weak code.
Makes the AI question your plan until you both agree on the design, so it builds what you expect. Critics say it still scope creeps and can produce weak code.
41 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 39
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 95%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 39 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 20 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Questions you until design choices are clear
“its interviews you to resolve design decisions until you have shared understanding(you and the coding agent).”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Do you guys also still use Claude Code's plan mode?” “A planning session without it might be Claude asking you 2 questions, and with it 22.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Claude Opus 4.7” “The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Plan mode is dead” - Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “Plan mode is dead”
- Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “The Year of Internal Tools”
Builds shared understanding of the architecture
“I use the grill me skill and superpowers brainstorming to learn different methods of building stuff as far as architecture goes.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Please Use AI” “I feel like I'm actually building my understanding of the system and helping shape it, and the results are much better”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “The Coming Loop” “make sure you're thinking about and understanding and signing off on the technical design”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code” - Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: How to deal with shipping AI-written code you don't understand?”
- Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Lathe – Use LLMs to learn a new domain, not skip past it”
Previews the build before coding starts
“it's particularly good for complex and big changes, so you actually know what the AI is gonna build before it does”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Plan mode is dead” “I can go right into implementation without needing to dump a PRD or some sort of broken up plan”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “The Coming Loop” “try /grill-me before getting it to start working on things”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage” - Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “My 'Grill Me' Skill Went Viral”
Pairs well with other skills
“I've used other people's skills, in particular Matt pococks grill me and Dex hortlys show me. These have helped a bit.”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Why are coding agents so dumb?” “Two skills I rely on are Matt pococks grill-me and his tdd. These massively helped”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg tells staff that AI agents haven't progressed enough” “I like using grill me in conjunction with obra superpowers spec driven development”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance” - Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Terrence Tao's ChatGPT Conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture Counterexample”
- Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Redis array: short story of a long development process”
Other agent skills people recommend
The four most recommended other agent skills, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superpowers | 138 | 72 | 66% | 12 | 4 mo7 owners | — |
| Claude Skills | 59 | 26 | 69% | 11 | — | Approved |
| grill-me skill by Matt PocockThis page | 39 | 2 | 95% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Get Shit Done | 31 | 32 | 49% | 7 | — | — |
| Matt Pocock's skills | 27 | 2 | 93% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 49 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“This usually forces me to broadly understand the architecture”
“Similarly I like the /grill-me skill by Matt Pocock”
“Its helpful for me and my ADHD brain because I can go down all sorts of rabbit holes”
“I've used other people's skills, in particular Matt pococks grill me and Dex hortlys show me. These have helped a bit.”
“It's so much better than plan mode.”
“I began to notice extraneous cognitive load and other challenges.”
“its interviews you to resolve design decisions until you have shared understanding(you and the coding agent).”
“Matt Pocock's skills library includes "grill-me" which is precisely this. It's excellent.”
“I find them extremely useful for asking me questions”
“the highest ROI thing I've found is the concept of the grill-me skill”
“it's particularly good for complex and big changes, so you actually know what the AI is gonna build before it does”
“using Grilling[0]. Often I find that I want to expand the scope of work”
“The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
“I totally agree! I usually combine it”
“interrogates a plan until the weak parts fall out”
“There are skills like grill-me that can potentially help these people a lot”
“Gateway drug is “/grilling” by Matt Pocock.”
“I like using grill me in conjunction with obra superpowers spec driven development”
“Plan looked great. But Christ, the code at is just not good enough.”
“Even with MP's skills adding that kind of context to written files, it still kept trying to scope creep the crap out of the project.”
“a skill like grill-me from Matt P.”
“the "grill" skill from matt pocock is quite nice for this”
“make sure you're thinking about and understanding and signing off on the technical design”
“I have been using https://www.aihero.dev/skills-grill-me with great success.”
“I usually pair this with matt pocock's grilling skill to make claude behave”
“Something like grill-me is a forcing function to do this.”
“Matt Pocock's "grill-me" skill is a nice example of this idea”
“With good set of docs and new feature definition you can most of the time use /grill-me with good outcomes.”
“Two skills I rely on are Matt pococks grill-me and his tdd. These massively helped”
“Terse, to the point, and delivers outsized results.”
“I can go right into implementation without needing to dump a PRD or some sort of broken up plan”
“I feel like I'm actually building my understanding of the system and helping shape it, and the results are much better”
“I had a very insightful grilling session yesterday”
“I use the grill me skill and superpowers brainstorming to learn different methods of building stuff as far as architecture goes.”
“The grill-me skill from Matt Pocock is great for this”
“Matt Pocock's excellent /grill-me”
“combined with Matt Pocock's excellent /grill-me and /grill-with-docs skills”
“try /grill-me before getting it to start working on things”
“A planning session without it might be Claude asking you 2 questions, and with it 22.”
“This is why the grill me skill went viral”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.