coco
13 KiB
title, source, author, published, created, description, tags
| title | source | author | published | created | description | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I Tried 100+ Claude Code Skills. These 6 Are The Best | https://x.com/nateherk/status/2050941624578920535 |
|
2026-05-03 | 2026-05-04 | 400 hours in Claude Code. I've worked with real estate agencies, HVAC companies, coaches, marketing agencies, etc.Different industries. Sa... |
|
400 hours in Claude Code. I've worked with real estate agencies, HVAC companies, coaches, marketing agencies, etc. Different industries. Same problems. Same six skills keep showing up. These aren't flashy demos. They're boring, simple, and effective. The kind of skills businesses actually write checks for.
Quick note: I'll use the word "skill" throughout this, but technically some of these are plugins. A skill is a markdown file that teaches Claude how to do a specific job. A plugin is a bigger package around that skill. It can contain multiple skills plus extras like hooks or MCP servers that change how Claude Code behaves under the hood. For this breakdown, the technical category doesn't matter. What matters is that each one makes Claude noticeably better at its job.
1. The Factory: Skill Creator
This is the skill that builds every other skill.
You describe what you want in plain English. Claude drafts the skill, tests it, iterates on it, and packages it into something you can use forever. You don't manually touch a skill.md file. You don't figure out the formatting. You just talk to Claude like you're explaining the job to a coworker and walk away with a skill that runs the same every time. You can even drop in an SOP and it turns that into a reusable skill. The skill itself isn't what a client pays for. But every automation you sell to an HR company, a real estate agency, a coach, they all come out of this one. It's the factory that builds the product. Simple example: a real estate agency wastes hours every week writing property descriptions. Without Skill Creator, you're writing out the whole skill.md file, figuring out trigger conditions, testing it over and over. With Skill Creator, you explain it naturally and it builds, tests, and packages it. Compresses the learning curve. I installed this one globally on a user scope. No matter what project I'm working in, if I need to build a skill, it just invokes automatically. Install: /plugin install skill-creator@claude-plugins-official
2. The Process: Superpowers
The number one failure mode in Claude Code is rushed code. You ask for something. Claude sprints to write it. On the surface it looks fine. Then your client runs it and it falls apart. Superpowers forces Claude to work like a senior developer. Instead of jumping in and writing code right away, Claude steps back and plans the whole thing first. Here's what it does: → Plans the entire implementation before writing a single line → Works in an isolated environment so nothing breaks your main project → Writes tests before writing code → Brainstorms solutions → Reviews its own work in two stages: once for whether it matches the spec, once for code quality It won't make Claude one-shot everything. A large part of your job is still QA. But getting 80% right on the first pass instead of 60%? That's fewer debugging cycles, less time fixing things, and lower token costs. 150,000+ stars on GitHub. Most popular community skill out there. Install: /plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official
3. The Clean Room: GSD
If Superpowers is about how Claude writes code, GSD is about the environment Claude writes it in. Here's what stood out after long sessions. You start a session. Things are great. Claude's nailing everything. Then somewhere around halfway through the context window, it starts to fall apart. Code gets sloppy. Claude forgets requirements you set at the beginning. It cuts corners. It tells you things are done when they're not. That's context rot. GSD fixes it with context engineering. Instead of letting one big session slowly degrade, it spawns fresh sub-agents for each task. Each one gets a clean context window focused only on what it needs to know. Your main session stays clean. Each task gets the full power of Claude's context window instead of just the leftovers. It also has built-in quality gates: → Scope reduction detection catches when Claude silently drops a requirement you asked for → Security enforcement anchors verification to your threat model These aren't things you'd manually think to check, especially if you're not coming from a software engineering background. That's exactly why having them automated matters. There's an autonomous mode too. Hand Claude a spec and walk away. It'll plan, execute, commit, and work through the whole project without babysitting. Here's the key relationship: Superpowers gives Claude the process (plan, test, review, repeat). GSD gives Claude the clean context so that process actually works every time. The sub-agents cost tokens. But what it saves you is the hours you'd spend redoing work that Claude broke because it forgot what you asked. Install: npx get-shit-done-cc --claude --global Type /gsd-help inside Claude Code to see all available commands.
4. The Safety Net: /review + /ultra-review
This one's already built into Claude Code. Most people just aren't using it. Type /review after writing code. Claude runs a structured code review on what you just built. Bugs, edge cases, design issues. All the stuff a careful reviewer would flag. Runs locally. Fast. Costs nothing beyond your usual usage tokens. /ultra-review is the bigger version. Launched alongside Opus 4.7. Instead of running locally, it uploads your branch to a cloud sandbox and spins up a fleet of reviewer agents in parallel. Each one attacks your codebase from a different angle: logic, security, performance, edge cases. The key part: before any bug shows up on your list, it has to be independently reproduced and verified. No pile of style nitpicks or false positives. Confirmed bugs only. The annoying part. A few requirements: → Need Claude Code version 2.1.86 or later → Must be signed in with a Claude account. An API key alone won't work. → /ultra-review can take 10-20 minutes, but it runs in the background so you can keep working → Pro and Max plans get 3 free runs to try. After that it's $5-20 per run depending on size Practically, this fits at the end of any Claude Code workflow. Plan with Superpowers. Execute with clean context using GSD. Then before you merge anything important, run /review to catch what Claude missed. Use /review for fast feedback on everything. Save /ultra-review for the merges that matter. Big refactors. Anything touching payments, auth, or database migrations. The kind of commit where a production bug costs way more than the time and tokens. No install needed. Just type /review or /ultra-review in your terminal on Claude Code 2.1.86+.
5. The Compressor: Context Mode
Every tool call Claude makes dumps raw data into your context window. A Playwright snapshot? 56 kilobytes. 20 GitHub issues? 59 kilobytes. After about 30 minutes of real work, 40% of your context window is just garbage. Log output, raw data, stuff Claude never actually needs to look at. And when Claude runs out of space and compacts the conversation, it forgets what files it was editing, what tasks were in progress, and what you last asked it to do. Context Mode fixes both halves of this problem. First, it keeps the garbage out. When Claude runs a command or fetches a URL, Context Mode routes that call through a sandbox. Your code runs in an isolated subprocess. The raw output gets captured and only the part Claude actually needs comes back into the context window. The numbers from their benchmarks: → 56KB Playwright snapshot becomes 299 bytes → 46KB access log becomes 155 bytes → 315KB of raw output across a full session becomes 5KB total You can check your own numbers anytime by running /context-mode:ctx-stats. Second, it tracks every meaningful event in your session in a local SQL database. Every file edit, every task, every decision, every error. When Claude compacts the conversation, Context Mode rebuilds a session snapshot and injects it back in. The model picks up exactly where you left off. Files, tasks, last prompt. All intact. Sessions that used to fall apart at the 30-minute mark now run for three hours without slowdown. You stop wasting prompts reminding Claude of context it already had. Install: /plugin marketplace add mksglu/context-mode /plugin install context-mode@context-mode Restart Claude Code after install. The plugin auto-installs the MCP server, hooks, and routing instructions.
6. The Memory: Claude Mem
If Context Mode keeps your current session clean, Claude Mem carries knowledge across all future sessions. Claude Code starts every new session from scratch. You open a session. Explain the project for the fifth time this month. 10 minutes and thousands of tokens just getting Claude caught up. You can try to solve this with CLAUDE.md files and memory files. Those are plain text files that give Claude persistent project instructions. They work, but you have to maintain them by hand. Miss an update and Claude misses that context. Claude Mem takes this completely over. It hooks into Claude's session lifecycle and automatically captures what happened during your session. File edits, decisions, bug fixes, commands. Then it uses Claude's own Agent SDK to compress all of that into semantic summaries and stores everything in a local SQLite database with vector search. New session? The relevant parts get injected back automatically. It also auto-generates folder-level CLAUDE.md files and updates them as you work. Your project documentation literally writes itself while you code. The retrieval uses a three-layer search system: 1️⃣ Returns a compact index of observations 2️⃣ Pulls a timeline around the ones that matter 3️⃣ Fetches full details only for the specific handoff you need About 10x token savings on retrieval compared to dumping everything in at session start. You pick up a project you haven't touched in two weeks and Claude already knows what you were working on, what you decided, and where you left off. Everything runs locally with a web viewer so you can see exactly what Claude remembers about your project. Install: /plugin marketplace add thedotmack/claude-mem /plugin install claude-mem Important: don't run the npm install command. That installs the SDK library only and nothing actually works because the hooks never register. Stick with the two commands above.
Bonus: Frontend Design
One more. This is the official frontend design skill from Anthropic. If you're building anything visual in Claude Code, whether it's website design, slide decks, or UI components, this skill makes them look significantly less AI-generated. Install it globally so whenever you're designing anything, it activates automatically. Worth noting: this type of capability is also baked into Anthropic's new product, Claude Design. But if you bring that project back into Claude Code, you'll want this skill installed. Install: /plugin install frontend-design@claude-plugins-official
How to Actually Sell This
Stop selling the workflow. Sell the outcome. Saving the business owner 10 hours a week. Cutting their admin mistakes and human error. Speeding up their leads. That's what they actually want to pay for. Instead of offering to build an AI workflow, you're offering to save time, cut costs, and help them focus on making more profit. If you're brand new, don't try to use all six right away. 1️⃣ Pick one skill 2️⃣ Learn it 3️⃣ Build out a few workflows using it 4️⃣ Show a business owner a demo They won't care about your experience. They'll care about the value of what you're showing them. Once you understand how these skills work and how they piece together, you build better automations quicker and cheaper. More demos, more content, more of your own business automated. All of that experience helps you communicate value to business owners much better. I walk through all six installs and the full selling strategy in the video. Link in the first reply.