superpowers: a brainstorm, plan, test-first workflow for Claude

Left alone, an AI assistant tends to jump straight into code. superpowers adds the habits of a careful senior engineer: ask what you actually want, write a plan, write a failing test before the fix, find the root cause of a bug instead of guessing, and run the checks before saying something works.

What’s inside: skills, slash commands, hooks. Published by: Anthropic, in the official marketplace.

How it works

superpowers is mostly a library of skills, each a SKILL.md file with a short description of when it applies:

  • brainstorming: questions and a proposed design before any creative work
  • writing-plans and executing-plans: a step-by-step plan, then working through it
  • test-driven-development: red, green, refactor
  • systematic-debugging: reproduce, isolate, then fix
  • verification-before-completion: run the commands and read the output before claiming success

A session-start hook adds a short instruction telling Claude to check for a matching skill before acting. When your request matches a description, Claude loads that skill’s full text and follows it.

Install

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official
/plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official
claude plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official

Skip the first line if you already added the claude-plugins-official marketplace. Reload the VS Code window or restart claude afterwards. New to plugins? See the install guide in this series.

How to use it

It kicks in on its own for feature work and bugs. To steer it, name a step ("brainstorm this first", "debug this systematically"). For a tiny change, say so and it will skip the ceremony.

  • Brainstorm a CSV to JSON converter before we build it
  • This test started failing after the upgrade, debug it systematically
  • Small change, no planning needed: rename the Submit button to Save

Good use cases

  • New features, where a few clarifying questions save a rewrite
  • Bugs that have resisted a quick fix
  • Anything you are about to commit or open a pull request for

When not to use it

One-line fixes and quick questions. The brainstorm and plan steps cost more time than they save there, so tell Claude to skip them.

How we use it on Zykit