Superpowers: Skills Framework for Agentic Coding
Superpowers equips AI coding agents with composable skills enforcing TDD, spec refinement, subagent reviews, and git worktrees to deliver autonomous, reliable software development without premature coding.
Enforced Workflow Prevents Premature Coding
Superpowers activates skills automatically before agents write code, starting with brainstorming to refine ideas via Socratic questions, explore alternatives, and present digestible design chunks for user validation—saving a design document only after approval. Post-design, writing-plans decomposes work into 2-5 minute tasks specifying exact file paths, full code, and verification steps, emphasizing true red/green TDD, YAGNI, and DRY for junior-engineer clarity. Using-git-worktrees then isolates work on a new branch with clean test baselines. Implementation uses subagent-driven-development (fresh subagents per task with two-stage review: spec compliance then code quality) or executing-plans in batches with checkpoints, enabling hours of autonomy. Between tasks, requesting-code-review blocks on critical issues; completion triggers finishing-a-development-branch for test verification and merge/PR options.
Core Skills Promote Systematic Practices
Skills fall into testing (test-driven-development: RED—write failing test; GREEN—minimal passing code; REFACTOR—commit, deleting pre-test code; references anti-patterns), debugging (systematic-debugging: 4-phase root cause with root-cause-tracing, defense-in-depth, condition-based-waiting; verification-before-completion confirms fixes), collaboration (dispatching-parallel-agents for concurrency; receiving-code-review responds to feedback), and meta (writing-skills for new skill creation with testing; using-superpowers intro). Agents check relevant skills before every task, making workflows mandatory.
Philosophy and Setup Trade-offs
Prioritizes TDD first, systematic processes over ad-hoc guessing, simplicity to reduce complexity, and evidence-based verification. Installs via marketplaces for Claude Code (official or Superpowers marketplace: /plugin install superpowers@...), OpenAI Codex CLI/App, Cursor (/add-plugin superpowers), OpenCode (fetch INSTALL.md), GitHub Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI (gemini extensions install https://github.com/obra/superpowers). Updates often automatic; contributions to dev branch follow writing-skills, but new skills rarely accepted. MIT licensed; 159k stars, 13.8k forks, 151 issues.