engineering / skill
Skills For Real Engineers
Small, composable agent skills for everyday engineering work: specs, tickets, test-driven development, debugging, code review and architecture.
At a glance
- Purpose
- Small, composable agent skills for everyday engineering work: specs, tickets, test-driven development, debugging, code review and architecture.
- Runs in
- Local agent with shell
- Operating systems
- Not stated
- Needs
- Runtime: Not stated; Needs internet: Not stated; Needs accounts or API keys beyond your agent: Not stated
- Files and data
- Reads files: Yes; Writes files: Yes; Sends data to other services: Yes
- Tool type
- Skill
- Delivery
- From GitHub
- Version
- Latest on the main branch
- Access
- Code on GitHub
- Compatibility
- Claude Code, Codex and GitHub Copilot (CLI and VS Code) as plugins; Gemini CLI through gemini skills install (updates are manual); other agents such as Cursor, OpenCode and Windsurf through the npx skills installer, according to the README.
- External costs
- The repository is MIT-licensed and states no pricing. Your coding agent or model provider may charge for usage.
- Permissions
- The skills act through your coding agent with the access you give it. Some read and change files in your repository, and some create issues in your issue tracker. One (wizard) generates an interactive script that walks you through steps such as setting up credentials or CI secrets.
- Usage terms
- MIT License, as stated in the repository. See its LICENSE file for the exact terms.
Code on GitHub
mattpocock/skills
MITSkills for Real Engineers. Straight from my .agents directory.
Public GitHub data fetched · 0 days old
Skill folders in this repository (38)
Folders that contain a SKILL.md file, from GitHub's file list on .
skills/engineering/ask-mattskills/engineering/code-reviewskills/engineering/codebase-designskills/engineering/diagnosing-bugsskills/engineering/domain-modelingskills/engineering/grill-with-docsskills/engineering/implementskills/engineering/implement-specskills/engineering/improve-codebase-architectureskills/engineering/prskills/engineering/prototypeskills/engineering/researchskills/engineering/retroskills/engineering/setup-matt-pocock-skillsskills/engineering/tddskills/engineering/to-specskills/engineering/to-ticketsskills/engineering/triageskills/engineering/wayfinderskills/engineering/wizardskills/in-progress/chief-of-staffskills/in-progress/claude-handoffskills/in-progress/loop-meskills/in-progress/setup-ts-deep-modulesskills/in-progress/writing-beatsskills/in-progress/writing-fragmentsskills/in-progress/writing-shapeskills/misc/git-guardrails-claude-codeskills/misc/migrate-to-shoehornskills/misc/scaffold-exercisesskills/misc/setup-pre-commitskills/productivity/grill-meskills/productivity/grillingskills/productivity/handoffskills/productivity/teachskills/productivity/to-questionnaireskills/productivity/wait-whatskills/productivity/writing-for-agents
What it does
A public collection of agent skills that Matt Pocock says he uses every day for real engineering work. The repository's README describes them as small, easy to adapt and composable, and says they work with any model.Engineering skills cover turning a conversation into a spec or a set of tickets, implementing a spec, test-driven development, diagnosing hard bugs, code review, pull request write-ups, throwaway prototypes and codebase architecture. Productivity skills cover being interviewed about a plan until every branch is resolved, handing work to another agent, teaching, and writing documents for agents.
Some skills run only when you type them, such as /grill-me. Others your agent can also pick up by itself.
Who it is for
Developers who use coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI or Cursor and want reusable engineering workflows.Example tasks
Turn a design conversation into a spec, then into tickets.Build a feature one vertical slice at a time with a red-green-refactor loop.
Work through a hard bug: reproduce it, minimise it, test hypotheses.
Review a diff against your repository's coding standards and the spec.
Hand the current conversation to another agent as a handoff document.