mattpocock-skills

Cursor Skills

Agent skills and rules for Cursor, installed per-repo via skills-cursor.

Based on Matt Pocock's skills. See CONTRIBUTORS.md for attribution.

Quickstart

From any repo:

npx skills-cursor install

Or from a local checkout of this repo:

node cli/bin/skills-cursor.mjs install

This copies skills to .cursor/skills/ and the ponytail rule to .cursor/rules/ponytail.mdc. Skills under personal/, in-progress/, and deprecated/ are skipped.

Then in Cursor, run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once to scaffold per-repo config (issue tracker, triage labels, domain docs).

CLI options

skills-cursor -h
skills-cursor install --skill tdd --skill grill-me
skills-cursor install --cwd ../my-app --dry-run

Repo layout

Path	Purpose
skills/	Skill source (edit here)
rules/	Cursor rule source
cli/	skills-cursor installer

Generated locally (gitignored): .cursor/skills/, .cursor/rules/. Re-run install after pulling skill changes.

Contributing

1. Add or edit skills under the right bucket in skills/:
   • engineering/ — daily code work
   • productivity/ — non-code workflow
   • misc/ — occasional tools
   • personal/, in-progress/, deprecated/ — not installed by the CLI
2. List new published skills in this README and in the bucket's README.md.
3. Run node cli/bin/skills-cursor.mjs install in this repo to dogfood.
4. Run npm test in cli/.

Add your name to CONTRIBUTORS.md when you land a change.

Reference

Engineering

• diagnose — Disciplined diagnosis loop: reproduce → minimise → hypothesise → instrument → fix → regression-test.
• grill-with-docs — Grilling session that sharpens terminology and updates CONTEXT.md and ADRs inline.
• triage — Triage issues through a state machine of triage roles.
• improve-codebase-architecture — Find deepening opportunities informed by CONTEXT.md and docs/adr/.
• setup-matt-pocock-skills — Scaffold per-repo config the other engineering skills consume. Run once per repo.
• tdd — Red-green-refactor, one vertical slice at a time.
• to-issues — Break a plan or PRD into independently-grabbable issues.
• to-prd — Turn conversation context into a PRD as a GitHub issue.
• zoom-out — Broader context on an unfamiliar section of code.
• prototype — Throwaway prototype to flush out a design.

Productivity

• caveman — Ultra-compressed communication mode.
• grill-me — Relentless interview until the decision tree is resolved.
• write-a-skill — Create new skills with proper structure.

Ponytail

Lazy senior dev mode — simplest solution that works.

• ponytail — YAGNI ladder, intensity levels (lite / full / ultra).
• ponytail-help — Quick-reference for ponytail commands.
• ponytail-audit — Audit code for over-engineering.
• ponytail-debt — Track intentional simplifications marked with ponytail: comments.
• ponytail-review — Review a diff through the ponytail lens.

The ponytail.mdc rule in rules/ is installed to .cursor/rules/ on every install.

Misc

• git-guardrails-claude-code — Block dangerous git commands via hooks (Claude Code; not Cursor).
• migrate-to-shoehorn — Migrate as assertions to @total-typescript/shoehorn.
• scaffold-exercises — Exercise directory structures.
• setup-pre-commit — Husky + lint-staged + Prettier.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Original skill content © Matt Pocock.