Overview
Drives one feature from idea to implementation through a fixed, gated chain. Thin glue: it sequences proven sub-skills and inherits their gates — it adds none of its own. The value is the order and the handoffs.
brainstorming → write spec (HTML) → grill-me → writing-plans → executing-plans → ask: open PR?
Dependency preflight
This skill chains external skills. At the start, check that each is installed:
superpowers:brainstorming,superpowers:writing-plans,superpowers:executing-plansgrill-me
For any that are missing: name exactly what's missing and offer to install it inline
(npx skills add obra/superpowers, npx skills add mattpocock/skills for grill-me) and
continue. If the user declines, fall back to following the skill's principle manually and
say so explicitly — the run is degraded, not equivalent.
Procedure
- Brainstorm. Invoke
superpowers:brainstormingto explore the problem and converge on a design. Let it run its own approval gate. - Write the spec as HTML. When the design is approved, do not write the default
markdown to
docs/superpowers/specs/. Instead author a self-contained HTML spec to.woo-stack/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.html, populating references/spec-template.html. HTML is for visualization — richer than markdown. - Harden it. Invoke
grill-meagainst the HTML spec. Amend the spec in place until grilling stops producing new questions. - Plan. Invoke
superpowers:writing-plans, saving the plan as markdown to.woo-stack/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md(plans are working checklists, not visualization artifacts). - Decompose to PR-sized increments. Steer work toward well-scoped PRs of preferably ≤500 lines of code — a soft target, not a gate. When the spec implies more than one reviewable PR, structure the plan as a sequence of independently shippable increments and run one increment per build cycle. Flag any slice that can't reasonably stay under the target and propose a further split before executing. Genuinely atomic changes may exceed the target.
- Execute. Invoke
superpowers:executing-plans(orsuperpowers:subagent-driven-development) to work the plan with TDD and frequent commits. - Offer the PR. When the increment lands on the branch, ask whether to open a PR. If
yes, open it (hands off to
woo-stack-review). If no, stop on the branch.
Hard constraints
- Inherit gates, add none. Do not insert extra approval stops between phases.
- HTML specs, markdown plans, under
.woo-stack/. Never write specs to the superpowers default location or format. - Never merge. build ends by offering a PR, nothing further.
- One increment per cycle. Do not let a single build cycle balloon past a reviewable PR.