Paste one line in a terminal
npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skillsPLUGIN / MATTPOCOCK
Matt Pocock's Engineering Skills
One engineer's daily working set, published as he uses it — deliberately small pieces to take apart and adapt, and the ones he says to run every time are interviews rather than code.
Which single technique most of this is built around, what has to be answered once before anything can be filed or written down, which corners of it are too specific to transfer anywhere, and what adopting it would change about the way a team already works.
One interview, at three depths.
The biggest single thing in here is one technique, repeated at three depths: an interview that keeps going while any part of a plan is still an assumption.
One entry is the questioning loop the other two stand on; one is the plain version, which leaves no files behind; one writes as it goes, putting each term into the project's glossary and each hard-to-reverse choice on record. Beside them sit a map for a job too large to see the end of, and a throwaway build that exists to answer one design question.
The author's instruction for the interview is to use one every time, before a change starts.
It asks you three things first, once per project.
None of the engineering entries work straight out of the box, and that is on purpose. One of the twenty-eight runs once per project and asks three questions:
- which issue tracker this project uses — GitHub, Linear, or plain files in the repository
- which labels go on a ticket when it is sorted
- where any document the set writes should be kept
The answers are written into the project itself, and the entries that file tickets or leave documents behind read them from there. Run it last and they have nowhere to put anything.
Narrow on purpose, and not all about code.
Not all of it is engineering. A writing pipeline and a tutor sit in the same package as the test and review entries, and several of the rest are narrow by choice:
- a generated shell script that walks a person through the clicking only a person can do
- the folder scaffolding for one course's exercises
- a swap of one TypeScript escape hatch for helpers from a library by the same author
None of it claims to generalise. The project's argument is against frameworks that take the process over; it calls these small and easy to adapt, so the parts that do not fit are there to be cut out.
What gets installed: 28 skills
Skills
Nothing in this group writes production code. They turn a half-formed want into something an agent can act on without asking: a router pointing at whichever flow suits the situation; the interview in each of its forms, one plain and one that also keeps a glossary and a decision record; a version aimed at the jobs you keep doing by hand, ending in a buildable spec; work nobody can picture whole yet, broken into questions parked on the issue tracker and settled one by one; code written to be deleted once it has answered one question; a background agent sent to read primary sources.
ask-mattA way to ask which of these skills fits the situation you are in right now — and which one takes the work afterwards.grill-meAn interview that keeps going until there is nothing left in your plan that you are only assuming — and it leaves no files behind.grill-with-docsThe same interview as grill-me, except every term it settles goes into the project's glossary and every hard-to-reverse choice into a written record.grillingThe questioning engine the other grill skills run on — one round of questions at a time, you make every decision, and it digs up its own facts.loop-meInterviews you about the jobs you keep doing by hand, until one is written down precisely enough for another agent to build it without asking anything.prototypeThrowaway code written to settle one question — does this logic hold up, or what should this screen actually look like — before anything real is built on it.researchSends a background agent off to answer a question from the official docs and source themselves, and leaves the findings in a file with every claim sourced.wayfinderSome jobs are too big and too vague to just start: you cannot see the way from here to there. This breaks the fog into the individual questions that have to be answered first, parks them on the issue tracker, and settles them one at a time until the route is obvious.
Here the typing starts. One works through what has piled up in the tracker, leaving each item either ready to build or closed with a reason; one takes a spec or a stack of tickets to committed code; two are the feedback loops, tests ahead of the code and a reproducible failing command before a bug is touched; one runs two reviews at once, asking separately whether the change follows the house rules and whether it does what was asked for. The last two are for when a job outgrows one sitting: compress what has happened into a document, or hand it live to a second agent.
claude-handoffHands the conversation you are in to a second agent that keeps working in the background, with a written summary so nothing has to be explained twice.code-reviewTwo separate reviews of the same change: one asks whether it follows the house rules, the other whether it does what the ticket asked for.diagnosing-bugsHard bugs get solved by first building one command that fails on the bug and passes once it is fixed — everything after that is mechanical.handoffBoils this conversation down into one document that someone else, or a fresh session, can pick the work up from.implementTakes a spec or a stack of tickets all the way to committed code — tests first, typechecked, and reviewed before anything lands.tddThe rules that make writing tests first produce tests worth keeping: check what the code does from the outside, at boundaries agreed before a line is written.triageWorks through the reports piling up in the tracker and leaves each one either ready for someone to build, or closed with the reason written down.
Three for the slow problem — code that works and nobody can reason about. One supplies a shared vocabulary for module, interface, seam and depth, so the argument is about the design rather than about what the words mean. One pins down what this project's own terms mean and records the choices that would hurt to reverse. The third goes looking for the parts most worth restructuring and lays them out as a page you can open, each with a before and an after, to pick one from.
codebase-designA shared vocabulary — module, interface, depth, seam, adapter — so a team argues about the design itself instead of about what the words mean.domain-modelingPins down what a project's own words mean, so two people using the same term aren't describing different things — and records the decisions that will hurt to reverse.improve-codebase-architectureScans a codebase for the parts most worth restructuring and lays them out in a web page you can open, each with a before and after, so you can pick one.
Run once, then forgotten. One points every other entry at this project's tracker, labels and document layout. Two make a machine stricter: the checks that fire at the moment of a commit, and a refusal of the git commands that throw work away, before they run rather than after. The other three are specific to a situation — a test-code migration onto one TypeScript library, the scaffolding for a course's exercise folders, and a generated script for setup steps that have to be clicked through by hand.
git-guardrails-claude-codeA safety catch on Claude Code: the git commands that can throw work away are refused before they run, not apologised for afterwards.migrate-to-shoehornTests often need half an object, or deliberately wrong data — this replaces TypeScript's unsafe escape hatch with helpers that keep the type checker happy.scaffold-exercisesLays out the folders for a course — numbered sections, each exercise with its problem, solution or explainer — already named the way the project's checker demands.setup-matt-pocock-skillsA one-time setup: it asks where this project keeps its issues, labels and docs, and writes the answers where every other skill in the set can read them.setup-pre-commitMakes the checks run by themselves at the moment you commit, so formatting, types and tests are caught on your machine rather than in a failed build.wizardSome setup steps only a person can do — clicking through somebody else's website to fetch a key. This turns those into a script that opens each page, says exactly what to click, takes the value you copy back, and puts it where it belongs.
Not engineering at all. Three of these are a prose pipeline, run in order: gather the raw scraps without shaping them, build an article out of them paragraph by paragraph, then order the piece so that no part of it leans on an idea the reader has not been handed yet. The fourth is a tutor — a short lesson at a sitting, a folder of cheat sheets, and a record of what has already been covered.
teachTeaches you a subject over many sittings — a short lesson at a time, a folder of cheat sheets, and a record of what you already know.writing-beatsWriting an article as a journey rather than an outline, with one rule holding it together: no part of the piece may lean on an idea the reader has not been given yet, so every step both makes its move and opens up the ones that can follow.writing-fragmentsThe notebook stage of writing, before anything has a shape: it interviews you about what you want to say and keeps every usable scrap that falls out — a good sentence, a story, a half-finished thought — in one file, deliberately unsorted.writing-shapeAn editor who will not let a paragraph in without a reason: it mines your notes for what the article needs, reworking each piece as it goes so the finished thing reads in a single voice rather than as a pile of quotes.
02Two lines, typed at the assistant, bring all of it in.
INSTALL
Two lines, typed at the assistant, bring all of it in.
Then one more, once per project, before the engineering entries have anywhere to file anything.
Add the marketplace, then install the plugin
Typed inside the agent's own prompt, not in a terminal. The marketplace is called mattpocock, which is the part after the @.
- 01
/plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills - 02
/plugin install mattpocock-skills@mattpocock