Matt Pocock's skills
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 23 agent skills by recommenders
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.
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.
29 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 93%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not 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
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 14 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Works with other tools and setups
“My current flow heavily relies on Matt Pocock's Skills and Sandcastle project.”
Comment from 3 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?” “I have an "orchestrator" which uses matt pocock skills like grilling”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “Bonsai 27B (1-bit LLM): The First 27B-Class Model to Run on a Phone” “I use OMP with Matt Pocock skills installed and it works great.”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “Having fun with oh my pi, DeepSeek-V4-Flash, GPT-5.6 Luna and Antigravity CLI” - Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8 Max now ranked as the best overall model by agentic index”
Structured process for planning and specs
“RPI/QRSPI like skills ... work well enough for me that they can reliably produce code that matches the plan/spec”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “DeepSeek V4–almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price” “Matt Pococks skills formalizes this process… (even though it can be excessive)”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “The Vibe Tax” “intermediate steps such as those encouraged by the Matt Pocock skills”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Software and AI – Plotting vs. Pantsing” - Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “OpenSpec – A lightweight and configurable AI spec framework”
High-quality output from coding agents
“RPI/QRSPI like skills ... work well enough for me that they can reliably produce code that matches the plan/spec”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “DeepSeek V4–almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price” “It has been absolutely amazing and felt like a step change in the output quality.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Plan mode is dead” “take care of all of that very well, with generally high quality output”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code” Grilling and TDD skills are useful
“The `grill-me` feature is honestly the most useful, not for guiding the follow up writing of code”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like” “I have an "orchestrator" which uses matt pocock skills like grilling”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “Bonsai 27B (1-bit LLM): The First 27B-Class Model to Run on a Phone” “mattpocock's TDD skill is sharp but copyable.”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “What's inside the trending "skills" repos for Claude Code”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Can be excessive
“Matt Pococks skills formalizes this process… (even though it can be excessive)”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “The Vibe Tax”
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 Pocock | 39 | 2 | 95% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Get Shit Done | 31 | 32 | 49% | 7 | — | — |
| Matt Pocock's skillsThis page | 27 | 2 | 93% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
28 of the 35 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I use mattpocock/skills and that generates ADRs (Architectural Decision Records).”
“That writing style is borderline incomprehensible.”
“It has been absolutely amazing and felt like a step change in the output quality.”
“researching through wayfinder maps (a Godsend to my workflow prior to Cursor Projects and orchestrator patterns)”
“other of author's skills I've used have been a game changer”
“for SDD I prefer to use Superpowers and/or Matt Pocock's skills”
“any of them will get the job done and are strictly better than not using one”
“stellar example of third-party skills for battle-hardened workflows”
“he has a hand-wavy approach to engineering in a silo”
“I've personally learned from reading his skills.”
“Matt Pococks skills formalizes this process… (even though it can be excessive)”
“They're one of the more useful things I've gotten out them.”
“take care of all of that very well, with generally high quality output”
“Use matt pocock skills or similar.”
“I use OMP with Matt Pocock skills installed and it works great.”
“they're designed to be called by the user instead of called automatically”
“intermediate steps such as those encouraged by the Matt Pocock skills”
“I have an "orchestrator" which uses matt pocock skills like grilling”
“YES! and I already love them.”
“My current flow heavily relies on Matt Pocock's Skills and Sandcastle project.”
“I had positive results without burning a quadrillion tokens”
“I've found this skill to work well”
“I've recently become a big fan of Matt Pococks skills.”
“mattpocock's TDD skill is sharp but copyable.”
“which has been quite nice”
“The `grill-me` feature is honestly the most useful, not for guiding the follow up writing of code”
“RPI/QRSPI like skills ... work well enough for me that they can reliably produce code that matches the plan/spec”
“My workflow is also highly inspired by Matt's skills”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.