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Matt Pocock's skills: a trending AI skills publisher
Matt Pocock's mattpocock/skills repository contains 38 agent skills in the skill-sets.md directory, 13 of them in the top 25. Here is what they do and how they rank, from directory data on 28 October 2026.
One repository of AI skills keeps appearing at the top of the skill-sets.md skills directory: mattpocock/skills, published by Matt Pocock, the TypeScript educator behind Total TypeScript. This article looks at what the repository contains and how its skills rank, using the directory's public data.
The repository at a glance
On 28 October 2026 we tracked 38 skills from mattpocock/skills. Of those:
- 13 were in the top 25, and 23 in the top 100;
- 20 had passed 700,000 total installs;
- every one of the 38 have gained meteoric status, which marks skills that have recently become very popular.
The most installed, grill-me, ranked 2nd in our directory with 1.4m+ installs, behind only vercel-labs/skills/find-skills.
The most installed skills
| Rank | Skill | Installs | Last 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | grill-me | 1.4m+ | +30k |
| 6 | grill-with-docs | 1.2m+ | +30k |
| 7 | improve-codebase-architecture | 1.1m+ | +30k |
| 8 | tdd | 1.1m+ | +30k |
| 11 | setup-matt-pocock-skills | 1m+ | +20k |
| 12 | handoff | 1m+ | +30k |
| 15 | triage | 1m+ | +20k |
| 17 | prototype | 1m+ | +20k |
| 18 | grilling | 1m+ | +30k |
| 21 | domain-modeling | 890k+ | +30k |
| 22 | teach | 870k+ | +20k |
| 23 | codebase-design | 860k+ | +30k |
| 24 | diagnosing-bugs | 850k+ | +20k |
What the skills do
The descriptions below are quoted or closely paraphrased from each skill's own description in the directory.
Interviewing and planning
The best-known skills question the user before any code is written.
grill-me is "a relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design". grill-with-docs runs the same interview and "also creates docs (ADR's and glossary) as we go". grilling stress-tests "a plan, decision, or idea", and loop-me grills the user "about specs for the workflows I want to build".
A group of skills turns that thinking into work items. to-spec turns the current conversation into a spec and publishes it to the project issue tracker. to-tickets breaks a plan or spec into "tracer-bullet tickets", each declaring its blocking edges. wayfinder plans "a huge chunk of work (more than one agent session can hold)" as a map of decision tickets, and to-questionnaire turns an open decision into a questionnaire for someone else to fill in.
Engineering practice
tdd is for building features or fixing bugs test-first. improve-codebase-architecture scans a codebase for "deepening opportunities" and presents them as an HTML report. codebase-design gives a shared vocabulary for designing deep modules, and setup-ts-deep-modules wires dependency-cruiser into a TypeScript repository to enforce them. diagnosing-bugs is a diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions, code-review reviews changes against the repository's standards and its spec, and domain-modeling maintains a project's glossary and architecture decision records.
Working with agents
handoff compacts the current conversation into a document for another agent, and claude-handoff hands the conversation to a fresh background agent. triage moves issues and pull requests through a state machine and writes "agent-ready briefs". ask-matt is a router that suggests which skill fits the situation, and setup-matt-pocock-skills configures a repository (issue tracker, triage labels, domain docs) before the other skills are used.
Writing and teaching
teach teaches a new skill or concept within the workspace. Three writing skills split drafting into stages: writing-fragments (explore raw material), writing-shape and writing-beats (shape it into an article). writing-for-agents covers writing skills and files such as AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.
What is gaining ground
The newest additions are lower in the all-time table but growing quickly. On 28 October 2026, chief-of-staff, which pursues "a long-running goal in a single session by co-ordinating subagents", had 20k+ installs and had grown by about 25% in seven days. implement-spec and retro had each passed 50k installs, and pr, for writing pull request bodies, had 3k+.
Translations and community
We fold copies of a skill into data point. Matt Pocock's skills have been popular enough to drive community translations, such as vinvcn/mattpocock-skills-zh-cn, with 34 skills listed in the directory.
Security and licence
Each skill page lists the directory's own scan and partner audits. For grill-me, on 28 October 2026, our's, and all five external scans (Gen Agent Trust Hub, Socket, Snyk, Runlayer and ZeroLeaks) had passed. The skill has two files, declares no external dependencies and no allowed-tools, and does not declare a licence. Check the licence and the audits for each skill you plan to use, because they differ from skill to skill.
Installing the skills
A single skill installs with the command on its page, for example:
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-me
Several of these skills are also pinned, at release v1.2.3, in the hosted codebase-quality-toolkit skill-set: diagnosing-bugs, improve-codebase-architecture, code-review, codebase-design, grill-me, grilling and wayfinder. The set installs in one command:
A toolkit for sharpening a codebase from idea to shipped code. Design and architecture skills for pressure-testing plans, deepening module boundaries, diagnosing hard bugs, reviewing changes against standards and spec, and planning large work as decision tickets.
npx @skill-set/cli add codebase-quality-toolkit
To see the current figures, search the skills directory for mattpocock, or ask an agent connected to the skill-sets MCP server to get up-to-date metrics at any time.