Matt Pocock Skills¶

What it is¶

A repository of specialized skills for AI agents, including the "Grill-me" skill for rigorous plan verification.

What problem it solves¶

Extends agent capabilities with domain-specific execution scaffolds and critical thinking tools.

Where it fits in the stack¶

Category: AI & Knowledge / Agent Skills

Typical use cases¶

Plan Verification: Using Grill-me to ensure a proposed solution is robust before execution.
TDD Workflows: Automating the Red-Green-Refactor loop with specialized skills.
Complex Bug Diagnosis: Leveraging multi-step diagnostic patterns for elusive issues.

Strengths¶

Action-Oriented: Provides concrete execution scaffolds rather than just passive advice.
Critical Thinking: Specifically designed to force agents to "think twice" before acting.
Standardized: Uses the skills.sh pattern for easy installation and updates.

Limitations¶

Setup Required: Requires specific installation steps and sometimes tool configuration.
Learning Curve: Agents may need specific instructions to effectively utilize some of the deeper skills.

When to use it¶

When you need a "staff engineer" level of rigor from your AI assistant.
For complex projects that benefit from structured planning and TDD.

When not to use it¶

For quick, trivial scripts where the overhead of a "Grill-me" session is overkill.
If you prefer a completely custom, non-standardized skill setup.

Licensing and cost¶

Open Source: Yes (MIT)
Cost: Free
Self-hostable: Yes

Key Skills¶

Grill-me: A skill used to cross-examine and verify a proposed plan before execution. Getting the agent to ask detailed questions about what you are building to fix the communication gap between you and the agent.
Triage: Uses labels to help triage tickets in your issue tracker.
TDD: Implements a strict Red-Green-Refactor loop, refusing to write implementation code until a failing test exists.
Diagnose: Runs a multi-point inspection of the environment and code to find the root cause of a failure.

Getting started¶

Installation¶

Matt Pocock's skills can be installed using the skills.sh installer:

npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills

Basic usage¶

After installation, run the setup skill in your agent:

/setup-matt-pocock-skills

This will guide you through configuring your issue tracker and document storage preferences.

CLI examples¶

Use the skills directly within your AI agent's interactive session:

# Verify a plan before execution
# Agent will ask 3-5 challenging questions about your approach
/grill-me

# Use Test-Driven Development loop
# 1. Write failing test 2. Write code 3. Refactor
/tdd

# Diagnose a complex bug
# Agent runs logs, checks versions, and traces execution
/diagnose

# Setup skill
/setup-matt-pocock-skills

Thinking Pattern: The "Grill-me" Session¶

Before starting a 2-hour refactor, the user triggers /grill-me.

Agent Interaction: 1. User: "I'm going to migrate the database to Prisma." 2. Agent (/grill-me): - "How will you handle existing data migration?" - "What is the rollback plan if the Prisma schema generation fails in CI?" - "Have you considered the performance impact of Prisma's query engine on our edge functions?" 3. User: Answers questions, refining the plan. 4. Agent: "Plan verified. Proceeding with migration."

Sources / references¶

Contribution Metadata¶

Last reviewed: 2026-05-11
Confidence: high