MDRSS snapshot · skills/engineering/README.md from mattpocock/skills · audience: humans · License: MIT (Matt Pocock).

Index of the engineering bucket: eighteen skills for daily code work, each with a one-line description linked to its SKILL.

Relative links are pinned to commit 84fdeffd12f2.

Engineering

Skills I use daily for code work.

User-invoked

Reachable only when you type them (Claude Code: disable-model-invocation: true; Codex: policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false in agents/openai.yaml).

• ask-matt — Ask which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the user-invoked skills in this repo.
• grill-with-docs — Grilling session that also builds your project's domain model, sharpening terminology and updating CONTEXT.md and ADRs inline.
• triage — Move issues through a state machine of triage roles.
• improve-codebase-architecture — Scan a codebase for deepening opportunities, present them as a visual HTML report, then grill through whichever one you pick.
• setup-matt-pocock-skills — Configure this repo for the engineering skills (issue tracker, triage labels, domain doc layout). Run once per repo.
• to-spec — Turn the current conversation into a spec and publish it to the issue tracker.
• to-tickets — Break any plan, spec, or conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges — text in a local file, or native blocking links on a real tracker.
• implement — Build the work described by a spec or set of tickets, driving /tdd at pre-agreed seams and closing out with /code-review before committing.
• wayfinder — Plan a huge chunk of work — more than one agent session can hold — as a shared map of decision tickets on the issue tracker, resolved one at a time until the way to the destination is clear.

Model-invoked

Model- or user-reachable (rich trigger phrasing so the model can reach for them).

• prototype — Build a throwaway prototype to answer a design question: a single shareable HTML file for state/logic, or several toggleable UI variations.

• diagnosing-bugs — Disciplined diagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions: build a feedback loop that goes red on this bug → minimise → hypothesise → instrument → fix → regression-test.

• research — Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a cited Markdown file in the repo, run as a background agent.

• tdd — Test-driven development with a red-green-refactor loop. Builds features or fixes bugs one vertical slice at a time.

• domain-modeling — Actively build and sharpen a project's domain model — challenge terms, stress-test with scenarios, update CONTEXT.md and ADRs inline.

• codebase-design — Shared discipline and vocabulary for designing deep modules: small interfaces, clean seams, testable through the interface.

• code-review — Two-axis review of the diff since a fixed point: Standards (does it follow the repo's coding standards, plus a Fowler smell baseline?) and Spec (does it faithfully implement the originating issue/spec?), run as parallel sub-agents.

• resolving-merge-conflicts — Work through an in-progress git merge or rebase conflict hunk by hunk, resolving by intent traced to each side's primary source, then finish the operation — never --abort.

• wizard — Generate an interactive bash wizard that walks a human through steps only they can perform: provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, walking an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, or running a one-off migration or cutover.

Snapshot metrics: 3883 B · 33 lines · ~1406 tokens · 3 headings · links pinned to 84fdeffd12f2.