Matt Pocock's skills, mapped: the intended flow, every deprecation, and what replaced what (v1.1)
The intended flow for mattpocock/skills v1.1 is /grill-with-docs, /to-spec, /to-tickets, /implement, /code-review, with /wayfinder above it for multi-session work. /to-prd and /to-issues were replaced by /to-spec and /to-tickets in July 2026. Every change below links to Matt Pocock's own post, changelog, or commit.
By Skillselion, an Ellelion LLC publication · Updated July 10, 2026 · 4 min read · Stats verified against the live catalog
mattpocock/skills is the most-installed personal skills repo in the Claude Code ecosystem - by Matt Pocock's own count, "160K stars, 7.5m downloads... and no tutorial" (Jul 9, 2026). It is also unusually alive: skills get renamed, replaced, and publicly buried. This page is the complete, sourced map as of v1.1 (July 8, 2026): the flow he teaches, every deprecation, and what replaced what. Every claim links to his exact post, changelog, or commit.
What is the intended flow?
Pocock's video tutorial (July 9, 2026) walks five skills and is explicit that the order is the point:
"Watch me walk through the essential skills: /grill-with-docs, /to-spec, /to-tickets, /implement, /code-review. It's the whole flow, end-to-end."
Read it as a pipeline, not a toolbox:
1. /grill-with-docs - a relentless one-question-at-a-time interview that sharpens the plan and writes terminology and decisions to docs as it goes. Pocock calls it "the easy entry point" (reply). 2. /to-spec - turns the conversation into a spec (a PRD) and publishes it to the issue tracker. No interview, pure synthesis. 3. /to-tickets - breaks the spec into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring which tickets block it. 4. /implement - executes the tickets test-first at agreed seams. 5. /code-review - judges the diff on two axes: repo standards and conformance to the spec.
One prerequisite makes it portable: run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo. "Works with literally anything you can connect to programmatically, with zero changes to the skills" - GitHub, Jira, Linear, or local files (Jul 8, Apr 28).
Where does /wayfinder fit?
Above the flow. /wayfinder, the v1.1 headliner, plans work "too big for one agent session" as a shared map of investigation tickets. It plans; it does not build (aihero.dev doc). Pocock's positioning, in his words:
"/grill-with-docs? No I think that will remain the easy entry point. /wayfinder for intermediate/advanced users." (Jul 9)
"You'll find wayfinder intuitive, I promise. It's just a more organized and foolproof grill-me." (Jul 2)
/research and /prototype exist to feed it, "or can be used independently" (v1.1 announcement).
What was deprecated, and what replaced it?
| Deprecated / removed | Replaced by | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| /to-prd | /to-spec | v1.1, Jul 8, 2026 | announcement |
| /to-issues | /to-tickets | v1.1, Jul 8, 2026 | announcement |
| /diagnose | /diagnosing-bugs (rename, now model-invocable) | v1, Jun 17, 2026 | v1 announcement |
| /zoom-out | deleted; ideas live in /improve-codebase-architecture | v1, Jun 17, 2026 | reply |
| /qa | none (deprecated folder) | pre-v1 | repo |
| /design-an-interface | none (deprecated folder) | pre-v1 | repo |
| /request-refactor-plan | none (deprecated folder) | pre-v1 | repo |
| /ubiquitous-language | ground covered by /domain-modeling (added in v1) | pre-v1 | repo, v1 |
The deprecated folder's README is one line: "Skills I no longer use." On the culling philosophy, replying about an unused skill: "Yah I experimented with it, never used it, deprecated it and will remove it" (Jun 21).
A detail from the commit log: during the v1.1 release a sequential /to-plan skill was added at 13:11 UTC and unified away into /to-spec + /to-tickets at 13:18 - seven minutes (commit history).
Why did /to-prd become /to-spec?
Announced six days before v1.1, with an apology:
"/to-prd is changing to /to-spec. /to-issues is changing to /to-tickets. Apologies for the churn, but I've been wanting to make this change for a while and now's the time to do it." (Jul 2)
The reasoning is semantic, from the same thread: "Yep, /to-prd currently produces a spec. Tickets and issues are basically interchangeable" (reply). A skill's name is part of the prompt an agent reads, so the name now matches the artifact the next skill in the chain consumes. The same logic drove v1's split into model-invocable and user-invocable skills and its "63% reduction in token cost for skill descriptions" (v1 announcement).
What explicitly survived?
"/grill-me and /grill-with-docs still around" (Jul 6), and v1.1 shipped "crucial fixes to /grill-me". Install data agrees: grill-me is the repo's flagship at roughly 508k installs, ahead of grill-with-docs (424k) and tdd (400k).
How do you keep up?
- Update: run
npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills(v1.1 announcement). - Watch the changelog on aihero.dev and his X profile - every removal so far came with a successor or an explanation.
- His video overview: 5 Claude Code skills I use every single day (YouTube, @mattpocockuk).
- Every skill in the repo, including the deprecated ones, has a catalog page here with install counts, the full SKILL.md, and which skills to run before and after it - start from grill-me or the Top 100 leaderboard.
Sources
Matt Pocock's posts: tutorial video (Jul 9), v1.1 announcement (Jul 8), v1.1 teaser (Jul 6), rename announcement (Jul 2), rename rationale, wayfinder positioning, entry-point reply, v1 announcement (Jun 17), /zoom-out removal, deprecation philosophy (Jun 21), any-tracker setup (Jul 8). Articles: AI Skills for Real Engineers, v1.1 changelog, v1 changelog, the /wayfinder skill. Repo: mattpocock/skills, deprecated folder. All quotes verified against the original posts on July 10, 2026.
Common questions
What replaced /to-prd in mattpocock/skills?
/to-spec replaced /to-prd in v1.1 (July 8, 2026). Matt Pocock announced the rename on July 2: the skill already produced a spec, so the name now says so. It turns the current conversation into a spec (PRD) and publishes it to your issue tracker.
What replaced /to-issues in mattpocock/skills?
/to-tickets replaced /to-issues in v1.1 (July 8, 2026). It breaks a plan or spec into tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring which tickets block it. Pocock's rationale: 'Tickets and issues are basically interchangeable.'
Is /grill-me deprecated?
No. Matt Pocock confirmed '/grill-me and /grill-with-docs still around' on July 6, 2026, and v1.1 shipped 'crucial fixes to /grill-me'. At roughly 508k installs it remains the repo's most-installed skill.
What is the recommended order to use Matt Pocock's skills?
Per Pocock's July 9, 2026 tutorial, the essential end-to-end flow is: /grill-with-docs (sharpen the plan), /to-spec (publish the spec), /to-tickets (break it into tickets), /implement (execute test-first), /code-review (judge the diff against standards and spec). Run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo first.
Which mattpocock/skills are deprecated?
The repo's skills/deprecated folder ('Skills I no longer use') currently holds /qa, /design-an-interface, /request-refactor-plan, and /ubiquitous-language. Separately, /to-prd and /to-issues were replaced in v1.1, /diagnose was renamed /diagnosing-bugs in v1, and /zoom-out was deleted with its ideas folded into /improve-codebase-architecture.
Do the skills only work with GitHub issues?
No. Run '/setup-matt-pocock-skills link the skills to a custom issue tracker' once per repo. Pocock: it 'works with literally anything you can connect to programmatically' - GitHub, Jira, Linear, or plain local files.
Ranked by Skillselion - an independent directory of AI-coding tools, not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI or Cursor. Tool rankings reflect real adoption (installs, then GitHub stars) from the skills.sh registry and GitHub, last updated July 10, 2026.