Matt Pocock

Building Great Agent Skills: The Missing Manual

Jun 29, 2026 · 20:43

Matt Pocock presents a 'skill checklist' framework to help developers escape 'skill hell' by systematically evaluating and improving agent skills, covering trigger, structure, steering, and pruning. He explains the trade-offs between user-invoked and model-invoked skills: model-invoked increase context load and unpredictability, user-invoked increase pilot cognitive load. Structure divides skills into steps and reference, with branching material hidden behind context pointers to minimize skill.md. Steering uses 'leading words' like 'vertical slice' that appear in reasoning traces; to boost leg work, he splits skills so agents only see one step at a time. Pruning removes duplication, sediment, and no-ops that don't affect behavior. The framework is in the 'writing-great-skills' skill in his repository.

Full Walkthrough: Workflow for AI Coding — Matt Pocock

Apr 24, 2026 · 1:36:30

Matt Pocock presents a hands-on workshop on building a full AI-assisted coding workflow, arguing that software engineering fundamentals—not hype—make agents effective. He introduces the 'smart zone' and 'dumb zone' of LLMs (performance drops after ~100k tokens) and the 'Memento problem' (agents forget between sessions). His process starts with a 'Grill Me' skill that relentlessly questions the user until shared understanding is reached, then produces a PRD without reading it, slices work into vertical 'tracer bullet' issues, and runs agents AFK using TDD. He advocates designing codebases with deep, testable modules and shows Sandcastle, a TypeScript library for parallel agent execution with separate implementer (Sonnet) and reviewer (Opus). The workshop transforms ambiguous briefs into shippable features while keeping humans in the loop for QA and taste.

"Software Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever" — Matt Pocock

Apr 23, 2026 · 18:26

Matt Pocock argues that software fundamentals matter more than ever in the AI era, directly countering the 'specs-to-code' movement that treats code as cheap. He shares practical skills like 'Grill Me' to reach a shared design concept with AI, a ubiquitous language from domain-driven design to align terminology, and test-driven development to force small, deliberate steps. Drawing on John Ousterhout's 'deep modules' and Frederick Brooks's 'design concept,' he advocates structuring codebases with simple interfaces behind which AI can implement freely. He warns that bad code is the most expensive it's ever been, as it blocks the productivity gains AI can offer. His reusable skills are available in the GitHub repo MattPocock/skills.