# Matt Pocock's skills

27 Hacker News commenters recommended Matt Pocock's skills and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for well-tuned agent skills such as grilling, TDD and planning that produce higher-quality code with coding agents. Caveats: some find it excessive and the writing style hard to follow.

## Why people recommend it

- Works with other tools and setups (4 comments): "My current flow heavily relies on Matt Pocock's Skills and Sandcastle project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771813)) "I have an "orchestrator" which uses matt pocock skills like grilling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920120)) "I use OMP with Matt Pocock skills installed and it works great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49236380))
- Structured process for planning and specs (4 comments): "RPI/QRSPI like skills ... work well enough for me that they can reliably produce code that matches the plan/spec" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47990546)) "Matt Pococks skills formalizes this process… (even though it can be excessive)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49412425)) "intermediate steps such as those encouraged by the Matt Pocock skills" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48998160))
- High-quality output from coding agents (3 comments): "RPI/QRSPI like skills ... work well enough for me that they can reliably produce code that matches the plan/spec" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47990546)) "It has been absolutely amazing and felt like a step change in the output quality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853409)) "take care of all of that very well, with generally high quality output" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49242942))
- Grilling and TDD skills are useful (3 comments): "The `grill-me` feature is honestly the most useful, not for guiding the follow up writing of code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043433)) "I have an "orchestrator" which uses matt pocock skills like grilling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920120)) "mattpocock's TDD skill is sharp but copyable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48383439))

## What people warn about

- Can be excessive (1 comments): "Matt Pococks skills formalizes this process… (even though it can be excessive)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49412425))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Superpowers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/superpowers.md): 138 recommend
- [Claude Skills](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-skills.md): 59 recommend
- [grill-me skill by Matt Pocock](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grill-me-skill.md): 39 recommend
- [Get Shit Done](https://hackerapproved.com/p/get-shit-done.md): 31 recommend
- [Claude Code skills](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-code-skills.md): 21 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Matt Pocock's skills", https://hackerapproved.com/p/matt-pocock-s-skills/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).