Superpowers is a software development methodology for coding agents that guides work from clarifying requirements through design, planning, implementation, testing, and review. It is for developers who want agents to follow a structured, test-focused process using composable skills and subagents.
Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx skills add obra/superpowers --skill brainstorminggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowersWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/brainstorming)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/brainstorming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/brainstorming/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/brainstorming"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/brainstorming.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket warn
- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium Rogue Agent · line 77 Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00046 | $0.02300 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00018 | $0.00920 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00460 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00230 |
Grade A, and why
brainstorming scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
Copies of this mod
8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 398 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 365 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 365 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 398 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 365 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- brainstorming — 100% identical, 398 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 226 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Brainstorming
You are very good at building. You build what you believe your human partner wants, and that belief is usually thinner than it feels. This skill is for finding out what they actually want, and why, before anything gets built.
People often haven't finished working out what they want. Good questions help them think it through. When you understand the why, you make the hundred decisions they never mention the way they would have made them.
First: What Do You Actually Know?
Before you reply, ask yourself: what do I know about what they want, and why?
- Everything that matters is in the request ("make the icon cornflower blue"). This is a quick, clear task. Do it, and say what you did.
- Something non-trivial is missing. Start the conversation.
Your First Message
Your first message is two things, in this order:
- One line letting them know that if they'd rather skip the questions and have you just start, they can say so. If they take you up on it, this skill is done: state any significant how-it-gets-made choice (platform, language, medium) in one plain line, then do what they asked through the normal workflow.
- One open question that gets them describing. Ask about a real moment or a concrete picture: "What's the moment you find yourself wishing this existed?" or "Tell me about the people who'll be in the room."
That's the whole message.
The Conversation
Each message ends with one question: a single sentence with no list of example answers hanging off it. Use plain language, pitched just a little above where your human partner is. Match their vocabulary; never use process jargon.
Be clear and concise. Lead with what matters. Avoid jargon. When you report what you found, give them the most important findings and offer the rest.
Get them describing. Open questions come first. Their own words carry intent that your options can't. Offer a short menu only when they're stuck. When they say "just guess" or "what do you think?", propose something concrete.
What ships with it
7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 5d ago Changed · -60 lines · +9 tokens per session 6ee10d1481b8
- 26d ago Changed · +35 lines a32d22553547
- 1mo ago First seen · 251 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 74edf03ea6d2
brainstorming is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (299,875 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 2,300 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
Other skills, from other repositories
skill-creator
Create a skill or bring an existing one up to the same standard (validate + asm eval fix loop); run evals, tune triggering. Use when authoring, fixing, or retrofitting a skill. Don't use for invoking skills, writing prose, or Python scaffolds.
skill-index-updater
Add GitHub skill repos to the ASM index: clone, audit, eval, regenerate index, rebuild catalog, open PR. Use when given GitHub URLs to onboard. Don't use for refreshing indexed repos (refresh-index), improving skills (skill-creator), or install.
hello-world
A minimal test skill that greets the user and demonstrates the ASM publish workflow.
typescript
You MUST use this when working on TypeScript-specific problems - compiler errors, tsconfig, strict typing, type inference, generics, complex type definitions, module resolution, ESM/CJS interoperability, type-checking performance, migration, or monorepo configuration. Also applies to designing or refactoring type-safe…
debugging
You MUST use this when investigating bugs, regressions, failing tests, build or integration failures, flaky behavior, performance anomalies, or other unexpected technical behavior.
parallel-agents
You MUST use this when several units of work might run concurrently through agents - independent investigations, specialist reviews, repository analyses, or plan tasks that look unrelated - covering whether they are genuinely independent, which mutable state needs isolation, how wide the wave should be, and how…