Which Claude Code skills are people googling that slow the agent down?

On August 17, 2026, the skill sitting at the top of Skillselion's Trending in search rail was Grill Me. It is a user-invoked planning interview: 876,468 installs in the catalog that day, with the related search term up 3,250%. The catalog behind that rail held 81,246 listings, 60,011 skills, and 147,648,453 recorded installs.

Key takeaways

• Grill Me led the rail by search. Find Skills held 2,980,173 installs the same day.
• Grill Me had 219,406 GitHub stars. Find Skills had 29,037 stars and almost three million installs.
• Four of the seven names on the rail are taste or brevity skills: Impeccable, Caveman, Frontend Design, Ui Ux Pro Max.
• Security Review made the rail with 14,882 installs. Developers googled it before it showed up in the install ranking.
• Rank by installs when you are choosing in a hurry. Pull one skill mid-task. The skills catalog and the guides index are the shortlist. Leave extra files off the project until you need them.

Why does a slower agent show up in search?

You sit down to ship a feature. The first query is often a skill that will argue with you until the plan is settled. Grill Me exists for that moment. You invoke /grill-me on purpose so it does not fire itself. Answer the questions. Then let it build.

That is a different job from a code generator. The rail ranks rising Google queries against the live catalog.

What is the best planning skill on this snapshot?

Grill Me (mattpocock/skills): 876,468 installs, 219,406 stars, search up 3,250% on August 17, 2026. Install from the listing page. The repo is github.com/mattpocock/skills.

If the problem is finding the next skill rather than interviewing the plan, use Find Skills (vercel-labs/skills): 2,980,173 installs, 29,037 stars, search up 20%. Repo: github.com/vercel-labs/skills. The most installed skill in this set finds other skills.

For UI that still looks like default agent UI, start at the frontend design best list and the frontend-design category.

What else did people search the same day?

Same snapshot, live install counts:

• Impeccable (pbakaus/impeccable): 235,708 installs, search up 140%. GitHub. A taste layer for default agent UI.
• Caveman (juliusbrussee/caveman): 438,679 installs, search up 90%. GitHub. It makes the agent talk less.
• Frontend Design (anthropics/skills): 784,427 installs, search up 70%. GitHub. Anthropic's own taste skill. Pair it with the frontend design best list.
• Security Review (affaan-m/ecc): 14,882 installs. GitHub. Same rail as an almost-three-million-install finder.
• Ui Ux Pro Max (nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill): 318,475 installs, search up 30%. GitHub. Another taste pack next to Anthropic's official one.
• Find Skills: 2,980,173 installs, search up 20%.

How should you pick from a 60,011-skill catalog?

Sixty thousand skills is more than anyone browses before the first prompt. Stars on a GitHub repo measure attention. Installs measure whether someone put the file on an agent and left it there. Rank by installs when you are choosing in a hurry. Browse the skills index and, for MCP servers, the MCP index. Frozen research editions live under Research.

Type /grill-me when the agent is about to write code against a plan you have not agreed on. Stop stocking the project with forty skills before the first prompt. Pull one mid-task.

A complete starter stack

• Grill Me, when the plan is still an argument.
• Find Skills, when you do not know the name yet.
• Frontend Design or Impeccable, when the UI looks like a template.
• Caveman, when the transcript is the bill.
• Security Review, when you want a check that sat on this rail with 14,882 installs.

Common pitfalls

• Sorting the same seven by stars and missing Find Skills.
• Treating Security Review's rail placement as a security guarantee. 14,882 installs is real and tiny next to Grill Me or Find Skills.
• Loading a taste pack, a finder, and an interviewer, then adding thirty more "in case they help."

If you only install one thing from this snapshot, install the finder or the interviewer, then come back for taste when the UI looks like a template. Counts above are from the live Skillselion API on August 17, 2026.

Common questions