Superpowers Skills: The Coding Agent Skills Library, Explained

Superpowers skills turn a coding agent into a disciplined dev team. obra/superpowers calls itself "a complete software development methodology for your coding agents, built on top of a set of composable skills". It has about 305K GitHub stars as of Nov 3, 2026, one of the most-starred agent projects anywhere.

Here is what Superpowers skills are, the full Superpowers skills list, how to install them in each agent, and how the workflow runs.

1. What are Superpowers skills?

A skill is a SKILL.md file that describes how to do one kind of work. Claude Code, Codex and other agents load a skill when the task matches. Superpowers skills push this further: the using-superpowers skill tells the agent to check for a matching skill before every task and follow it. In the author's words, these are "mandatory workflows, not suggestions."

The result: before writing code, the agent asks what you really want, writes a short design, makes a plan, then builds it test-first with subagents. Users report agents working for a couple of hours without leaving the plan. If you are new to skills, start with our guide to Claude Code skills.

2. Superpowers skills list

3. How to install Superpowers skills

• Claude Code: /plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official
• Codex app / CLI: open Plugins, search Superpowers, install.
• Cursor: /add-plugin superpowers in Agent chat.
• Gemini CLI: gemini extensions install https://github.com/obra/superpowers
• Grok Build: grok plugin install superpowers@xai-official --trust
• Hermes Agent: hermes plugins install obra/superpowers --enable
• Also: GitHub Copilot CLI, OpenCode, Kimi Code, Qwen Code, Devin CLI, Factory Droid, Pi, Antigravity, Muse.

Test it: start a fresh session and say "Let's make a react todo list". With Superpowers skills working, the agent starts brainstorming instead of writing code.

4. The Superpowers skills workflow

1. brainstorming: asks questions, plays back its understanding, saves a design.
2. using-git-worktrees: new branch, clean test baseline.
3. writing-plans: small tasks with exact file paths, code and checks.
4. subagent-driven-development or executing-plans: builds task by task with review.
5. test-driven-development: failing test first; deletes code written before tests.
6. requesting-code-review: flags issues by severity; critical ones block progress.
7. finishing-a-development-branch: tests pass, then merge, PR, keep or discard.

5. Superpowers skills vs plain CLAUDE.md rules

A CLAUDE.md rule is a hint the model may forget. Superpowers skills are triggered by the task and include checklists the agent must clear, so the same process runs every time. The trade-off: more tokens and more questions up front. For a one-line fix, that can feel slow; for a real feature, most users say it pays off.

6. Who makes Superpowers?

Jesse Vincent and the team at Prime Radiant build Superpowers. It is MIT licensed and free; Prime Radiant sells enterprise support. New skill contributions are rarely accepted, because every skill must work across all supported agents.

7. Where Sumus fits

Yes, you can get the same plan-first, test-first discipline without setting up plugins on every laptop. A Sumus AI Employee works in your team chat: you describe the feature, it plans, splits work across agents, checks the result and reports back where your team can review it. Superpowers skills make one developer's agent better; an AI Employee makes the work visible to the whole team.

Sources

• GitHub: obra/superpowers, read Nov 3, 2026
• GitHub: obra/superpowers-skills (archived)
• Jesse Vincent, original Superpowers announcement, blog.fsck.com, Oct 9, 2025