Skills For Real Engineers - Matt Pocock

A repository of agent skills for Claude Code released by TypeScript educator Matt Pocock. Instead of a giant framework that controls the entire process, it aims to maximize agent performance while keeping developers in control, through an approach based on small, replaceable tool units.

Key design intent and features

• Strengthening alignment: Commands like grill-me force the agent to keep questioning the user's requirements until the end, preventing the problem of producing incorrect outputs.
• Token efficiency and building a shared vocabulary: CONTEXT.md is used to explicitly define domain terminology. This reduces the agent's verbose responses while simultaneously solving both token waste and naming consistency issues.
• Implementing engineering loops: Classic engineering principles such as tdd (test-driven development), diagnose (debugging loop), and improve-codebase-architecture (architecture improvement) are broken down into slash command units that the agent can perform.
• Practical auxiliary tools: Various skills that support real-world workflows are included, such as caveman mode, which compresses responses to save about 75% of tokens, and git-guardrails-claude-code, which blocks dangerous Git commands.

Rather than reckless automation that hands everything over to the agent, this project is an attempt to implement the engineering fundamentals of alignment, shared vocabulary, feedback loops, and modular design as tools for the agent era.