How to Use Superpowers Plugin Skills | Generated by AI
Question: How do I use the “skills” shown in /skills (from the superpowers plugin)?
Answer:
Those skills are reusable prompt templates provided by the Superpowers system. They are not commands by themselves — you invoke them by name when chatting with the CLI agent.
How to Use Skills
You call a skill explicitly in your prompt.
General format:
/skill <skill-name>
or simply describe the task and reference the skill:
Use skill: brainstorming
or:
brainstorming: help me design a caching layer
All three usually work (depends on the CLI wrapper).
Examples
1. brainstorming
/skill brainstorming
Help me design a local-first note app
This triggers structured ideation:
- goals
- constraints
- options
- tradeoffs
- recommended direction
2. receiving-code-review
/skill receiving-code-review
Review this PR:
<code here>
The skill forces the AI to:
- look for bugs
- suggest improvements
- flag architecture issues
- check readability
3. finishing-a-development-branch
/skill finishing-a-development-branch
I'm about to merge feature/auth-refactor
This skill typically:
- checks tests
- checks lint
- checks commits
- ensures changelog
- merge checklist
4. using-git-worktrees
/skill using-git-worktrees
I want to work on two features at once
It will guide:
- create worktrees
- branch layout
- cleanup
- best practices
5. verification-before-completion
/skill verification-before-completion
Implement Redis caching for this service
This forces AI to:
- implement
- test mentally
- verify edge cases
- validate output
Very useful for correctness.
What /skills actually shows
It lists:
- skill name
- plugin source (
superpowers) - description tokens (prompt length)
- number of skills loaded
So:
brainstorming · superpowers · ~56 tokens
means:
- name =
brainstorming - provider = superpowers
- size = 56 tokens prompt template
When to Use Skills
Use them when you want behavior mode switching:
| Use skill | When |
|---|---|
| brainstorming | exploring ideas |
| receiving-code-review | reviewing PRs |
| finishing-a-development-branch | before merge |
| verification-before-completion | correctness critical |
| using-git-worktrees | multi-branch work |
Pro Tip (Best Usage)
You can combine them:
Use skill: brainstorming
Then use skill: verification-before-completion
Design a distributed rate limiter
This gives:
- idea exploration
- careful validated solution
Mental Model
Skills = preloaded expert prompts
Instead of writing:
“Please carefully analyze, think step by step…”
You just use:
/skill verification-before-completion
Much cleaner.
If you’d like, I can also show:
- how to create your own skills
- where skills are stored
- how superpowers loads them
- how to auto-trigger skills
Just tell me.