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Matt Pocock Agent Workflow Suite - Setup Guide

Source: mattpocock/skills (20 skills, 11.4M+ combined installs) Category: Software Engineering / Agent Workflow / Product Management First Seen: Sep 9, 2026

This guide covers 20 Matt Pocock skills that were not included in the earlier Mattpocock Skills Setup (19 skills) or Engineering Skills (5 skills) guides. Together they form the interrogation-and-execution layer of the Pocock methodology: grilling plans, TDD loops, domain modeling, triage, handoffs between agent sessions, and spec-to-ticket pipelines. Combined installs: 11,400,000+.

Installation

Install all 20 at once:

# Interrogation layer
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-me
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-with-docs
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill loop-me
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill wait-what

# Engineering layer
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill tdd
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill code-review
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill diagnosing-bugs
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill domain-modeling
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill research
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill setup-ts-deep-modules

# Planning-to-tickets layer
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill to-spec
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill to-tickets
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill to-questionnaire
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill wayfinder
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill wizard

# Session and collaboration layer
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill handoff
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill triage
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill teach
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill writing-for-agents
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill retro

Prerequisites

Requirement Details
Hermes Agent Any recent version with skill support
Node.js 18+ For the npx skills CLI
GitHub repo with Issues enabled For triage, to-spec, to-tickets, wayfinder output
GitHub PAT with repo scope For issue/ticket creation

Capabilities

Interrogation Layer

Skill Installs What It Does
grill-me 1,103,281 A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design. Dispatches to grilling. The flagship skill of the suite
grill-with-docs 941,573 The grilling interview that also creates docs (ADRs and glossary) as it goes
loop-me 277,934 Grill me about specs for the workflows I want to build, within this workspace
wait-what 224,639 "Stop. That last message did not land: re-pitch it." - clarity catch

Engineering Layer

Skill Installs What It Does
tdd 873,338 Red-green-refactor loop reference: what a good test is, where tests go, anti-patterns, loop rules. Reads CONTEXT.md and ADRs
code-review 521,103 Reviews changes since a fixed point along two axes: Standards (repo's documented coding standards) and Spec (does the code match what was asked)
diagnosing-bugs 574,167 Diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions
domain-modeling 603,161 Build and sharpen a project's domain model; writes/edits CONTEXT.md and ADRs
research 476,454 Investigates a question against high-trust primary sources, captures findings as a Markdown file in the repo
setup-ts-deep-modules 211,966 Wires dependency-cruiser into a TypeScript repo so each package is a deep module (implementation hidden, reachable only through entry points)

Planning-to-Tickets Layer

Skill Installs What It Does
to-spec 474,307 Turns the current conversation into a spec and publishes it to the issue tracker - no interview, just synthesis
to-tickets 466,073 Breaks a plan/spec/conversation into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring blocking edges, published to the configured tracker
to-questionnaire 282,849 Turns a decision you can't fully answer into a questionnaire for someone else
wayfinder 483,129 Plans work too big for one agent session as a shared map of decision tickets, resolved one at a time
wizard 335,511 Generates an interactive bash wizard for steps only a human can perform (infrastructure, credentials, CI secrets, third-party dashboards)

Session and Collaboration Layer

Skill Installs What It Does
handoff 774,587 Compacts the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up
triage 760,099 Moves issues and external PRs through a state machine of triage roles: categorise, verify, grill if needed, write agent-ready briefs
teach 626,663 Teaches the user a new skill or concept, within this workspace
writing-for-agents 233,014 Writing documents for agents: creating/editing skills, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md
retro 72,735 Conducts a retrospective on a coding session

Quick Start

  1. Install the interrogation layer first: npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-me
  2. Grill a plan before building: invoke grill-me (or grill-with-docs if you want ADRs and a glossary as output)
  3. Build with tdd, review with code-review, diagnose failures with diagnosing-bugs
  4. Convert the finished conversation to specs and tickets: to-spec then to-tickets (or wayfinder for multi-session work)
  5. End each session with handoff so the next agent session picks up without re-reading the transcript

Typical workflow: grill-me -> tdd -> code-review -> to-spec -> to-tickets -> handoff

Limitations / Verification

# Verify skills installed
hermes skills list | grep -E "grill-me|tdd|handoff|triage|to-spec"

# Functional test
# "Grill me about this plan" -> invokes grill-me -> dispatches to grilling
  • grill-me sets disable-model-invocation: true - it is invoked via the Skill tool, not by the model directly
  • loop-me, retro, setup-ts-deep-modules live in the repo's in-progress directory - stable but evolving
  • Marketplace-only siblings (listed on skills.sh, no SKILL.md in the repo main branch yet): qa (205K), diagnose (238K), obsidian-vault (201K), review (94K), batch-grill-me (64K)

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