addyosmani/agent-skills

Production-grade engineering skills for AI coding agents.

Agent Skills

Production-grade engineering skills for AI coding agents.

Skills encode the workflows, quality gates, and best practices that senior engineers use when building software. These ones are packaged so AI agents follow them consistently across every phase of development.

trendshift.io/repositories/25200

Commands

8 slash commands that map to the development lifecycle. Each one activates the right skills automatically.

Want fewer manual steps once the spec exists? /build auto generates the plan and implements every task in a single approved pass — you approve the plan once, then it runs autonomously. It removes the human stepping between tasks, not the verification: every task is still test-driven and committed individually, and it pauses on failures or risky steps.

Skills also activate automatically based on what you're doing — designing an API triggers api-and-interface-design, building UI triggers frontend-ui-engineering, and so on.

Quick Start

Fastest path — any agent, one command. The open skills CLI installs into 70+ agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Cline, and more):

Or grab individual skills:

Prefer a native integration? Pick your tool below.

Claude Code (recommended)

Marketplace install:

SSH errors? The marketplace clones repos via SSH. If you don't have SSH keys set up on GitHub, either add your SSH key or use the full HTTPS URL to force the HTTPS cloning:

Local / development:

Cursor

Copy any SKILL.md into .cursor/rules/, or reference the full skills/ directory. See docs/cursor-setup.md.

Antigravity CLI

Install as a native plugin for skills, subagents, and slash commands. See docs/antigravity-setup.md.

Install from the repo:

Install from a local clone:

Gemini CLI

Install as native skills for auto-discovery, or add to GEMINI.md for persistent context. See docs/gemini-cli-setup.md.

Install from the repo:

Install from a local clone:

Windsurf

Add skill contents to your Windsurf rules configuration. See docs/windsurf-setup.md.

OpenCode

Uses agent-driven skill execution via AGENTS.md and the skill tool.

See docs/opencode-setup.md.

GitHub Copilot

Use agent definitions from agents/ as Copilot personas and skill content in .github/copilot-instructions.md. See docs/copilot-setup.md.

Kiro IDE & CLI Skills for Kiro reside under ".kiro/skills/" and can be stored under Project or Global level. Kiro also supports Agents.md. See Kiro docs atkiro.dev/docs/skills

Codex / Other Agents

Skills are plain Markdown - they work with any agent that accepts system prompts or instruction files. See docs/getting-started.md.

All 24 Skills

The commands above are entry points. The pack includes 24 skills total — 23 lifecycle skills plus the using-agent-skills meta-skill. Each skill is a structured workflow with steps, verification gates, and anti-rationalization tables. You can also reference any skill directly.

Meta - Discover which skill applies

Define - Clarify what to build

Plan - Break it down

Build - Write the code

Verify - Prove it works

Review - Quality gates before merge

Ship - Deploy with confidence

Agent Personas

Pre-configured specialist personas for targeted reviews:

See docs/agents.md for the decision matrix, orchestration rules, and how personas compose with skills and slash commands.

Reference Checklists

Quick-reference material that skills pull in when needed:

How Skills Work

Every skill follows a consistent anatomy:

Key design choices:

• Process, not prose. Skills are workflows agents follow, not reference docs they read. Each has steps, checkpoints, and exit criteria.

• Anti-rationalization. Every skill includes a table of common excuses agents use to skip steps (e.g., "I'll add tests later") with documented counter-arguments.

• Verification is non-negotiable. Every skill ends with evidence requirements - tests passing, build output, runtime data. "Seems right" is never sufficient.

• Progressive disclosure. The SKILL.md is the entry point. Supporting references load only when needed, keeping token usage minimal.

Project Structure

Why Agent Skills?

AI coding agents default to the shortest path - which often means skipping specs, tests, security reviews, and the practices that make software reliable. Agent Skills gives agents structured workflows that enforce the same discipline senior engineers bring to production code.

Each skill encodes hard-won engineering judgment: when to write a spec, what to test, how to review, and when to ship. These aren't generic prompts - they're the kind of opinionated, process-driven workflows that separate production-quality work from prototype-quality work.

Skills bake in best practices from Google's engineering culture — including concepts from Software Engineering at Google and Google's engineering practices guide. You'll find Hyrum's Law in API design, the Beyonce Rule and test pyramid in testing, change sizing and review speed norms in code review, Chesterton's Fence in simplification, trunk-based development in git workflow, Shift Left and feature flags in CI/CD, and a dedicated deprecation skill treating code as a liability. These aren't abstract principles — they're embedded directly into the step-by-step workflows agents follow.

How it compares

Wondering how this stacks up against Superpowers or Matt Pocock's skills? See docs/comparison.md for an honest, side-by-side look at how the three are shaped differently and when to reach for each — including a link to a controlled head-to-head experiment.

Contributing

Skills should be specific (actionable steps, not vague advice), verifiable (clear exit criteria with evidence requirements), battle-tested (based on real workflows), and minimal (only what's needed to guide the agent).

See docs/skill-anatomy.md for the format specification and CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT - use these skills in your projects, teams, and tools.