Note: This is a personal fork of obra/superpowers maintained by @going for my own use. It may diverge from upstream at any time and is not intended for general distribution. For the official project, install from the upstream marketplace — see the original README.
Superpowers is a complete software development methodology for your coding agents, built on top of a set of composable skills and some initial instructions that make sure your agent uses them.
It starts from the moment you fire up your coding agent. As soon as it sees that you're building something, it doesn't just jump into trying to write code. Instead, it steps back and asks you what you're really trying to do.
Once it's teased a spec out of the conversation, it shows it to you in chunks short enough to actually read and digest.
After you've signed off on the design, your agent puts together an implementation plan that's clear enough for an enthusiastic junior engineer with poor taste, no judgement, no project context, and an aversion to testing to follow. It emphasizes true red/green TDD, YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It), and DRY.
Next up, once you say "go", it launches a subagent-driven-development process, having agents work through each engineering task, inspecting and reviewing their work, and continuing forward. It's not uncommon for Claude to be able to work autonomously for a couple hours at a time without deviating from the plan you put together.
There's a bunch more to it, but that's the core of the system. And because the skills trigger automatically, you don't need to do anything special. Your coding agent just has Superpowers.
If upstream Superpowers has helped you, please consider sponsoring Jesse Vincent's work — the original author. This fork exists only because his project does.
This repository doubles as a Claude Code plugin and a single-plugin marketplace, so you can install it directly from the fork's Git URL. For all other harnesses, prefer the upstream install paths in obra/superpowers.
Register this fork as a marketplace, then install the plugin:
/plugin marketplace add going/superpowers
/plugin install superpowers@powersgemini extensions install https://github.com/going/superpowersTo update:
gemini extensions update superpowersClone into your plugins directory:
git clone https://github.com/going/superpowers.gitThen point your harness at the cloned path per its plugin docs.
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brainstorming - Activates before writing code. Refines rough ideas through questions, explores alternatives, presents design in sections for validation. Saves design document.
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using-git-worktrees - Activates after design approval. Creates isolated workspace on new branch, runs project setup, verifies clean test baseline.
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writing-plans - Activates with approved design. Breaks work into bite-sized tasks (2-5 minutes each). Every task has exact file paths, complete code, verification steps.
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subagent-driven-development or executing-plans - Activates with plan. Dispatches fresh subagent per task with two-stage review (spec compliance, then code quality), or executes in batches with human checkpoints.
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test-driven-development - Activates during implementation. Enforces RED-GREEN-REFACTOR: write failing test, watch it fail, write minimal code, watch it pass, commit. Deletes code written before tests.
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requesting-code-review - Activates between tasks. Reviews against plan, reports issues by severity. Critical issues block progress.
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finishing-a-development-branch - Activates when tasks complete. Verifies tests, presents options (merge/PR/keep/discard), cleans up worktree.
The agent checks for relevant skills before any task. Mandatory workflows, not suggestions.
Testing
- test-driven-development - RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle (includes testing anti-patterns reference)
Debugging
- systematic-debugging - 4-phase root cause process (includes root-cause-tracing, defense-in-depth, condition-based-waiting techniques)
- verification-before-completion - Ensure it's actually fixed
Collaboration
- brainstorming - Socratic design refinement
- writing-plans - Detailed implementation plans
- executing-plans - Batch execution with checkpoints
- dispatching-parallel-agents - Concurrent subagent workflows
- requesting-code-review - Pre-review checklist
- receiving-code-review - Responding to feedback
- using-git-worktrees - Parallel development branches
- finishing-a-development-branch - Merge/PR decision workflow
- subagent-driven-development - Fast iteration with two-stage review (spec compliance, then code quality)
Meta
- writing-skills - Create new skills following best practices (includes testing methodology)
- using-superpowers - Introduction to the skills system
- Test-Driven Development - Write tests first, always
- Systematic over ad-hoc - Process over guessing
- Complexity reduction - Simplicity as primary goal
- Evidence over claims - Verify before declaring success
Read the original release announcement.
This is a personal fork — I'm not accepting outside contributions here. For upstream contributions, see obra/superpowers.
MIT License - see LICENSE file for details. Original work © Jesse Vincent and contributors.
Superpowers is built by Jesse Vincent and the rest of the folks at Prime Radiant. This repository is a personal fork for my own use — all upstream questions, issues, and release announcements belong with the original project.