I have spent a lot of hours with coding agents, and for a while the results were evenly split. Sometimes I got something useful in minutes. Sometimes the agent set off confidently in the wrong direction, and untangling its work took longer than writing the thing myself would have. Superpowers, an open source plugin by Jesse Vincent (obra), is the first tool that reliably cut down the second case.
What it is
Superpowers is a library of skills: ordinary Markdown files that teach the agent how to do something and then insist that it does. There is no trick underneath. A skill fires at the right moment and walks the agent through a workflow any careful engineer would recognise.
The workflow it enforces
Strung together, the skills follow the discipline I wish I kept more consistently myself.
- Brainstorm first. It refuses to write code until it understands what I am really trying to build, then returns the spec in pieces short enough to read.
- Plan. It turns that spec into steps concrete enough for a junior with no context to follow.
- Test first. Real red then green: write the failing test, write the least code that passes, commit. YAGNI and DRY throughout.
- Delegate to subagents. Independent tasks go to fresh agents in their own git worktrees, with a review between stages so a long run does not drift.
- Review before merge. A final pass checks the work against the spec before anything lands.
The trade
It is slower to the first line of code. You give up the small thrill of an instant draft in exchange for far fewer wrong turns, a trade I would take anyway and one I keep failing to make when left to my own habits. Working this way feels less like prompting than like pairing with a more disciplined colleague.
The part I keep coming back to is that the skills are just Markdown. You can read them, fork them, and the system can mine your past sessions to write new ones. Most of my tools do not get better the more I use them; this one does.
Worth a look if agents are part of your day: obra/superpowers, and Jesse’s own post on the thinking behind it.