Skip to main content
This guide assumes you’ve completed installation. Skills activate automatically — you don’t need to do anything special. This page shows you what to expect and how to verify things are working.

​
Skills activate automatically

When you start a session with Superpowers installed, the using-superpowers skill is discovered immediately. From that point, your agent checks for relevant skills before every response and every action. You don’t invoke skills yourself — the agent does.
The rule is strict: if there is even a 1% chance a skill applies to what the agent is doing, it must invoke that skill before responding. This is not optional behavior — it’s enforced by the using-superpowers skill itself.

​
Example prompts that trigger skills

Try any of these in a new session to see skills activate:

​
A real example: building a feature

Here’s what a typical session looks like from the moment you describe something to build.
1

You describe what you want to build

You say something like: “I want to add rate limiting to our API.”The agent recognizes this as a new feature request and invokes the brainstorming skill before doing anything else.
2

The agent asks questions one at a time

The brainstorming skill instructs the agent to ask clarifying questions one at a time — never all at once. For example:
“What kind of rate limiting are you thinking — per user, per IP, or per API key?”
After you answer, it asks the next question. This continues until the agent has enough to propose a design.
3

The agent proposes 2–3 approaches with trade-offs

Once it understands the problem, the agent presents two or three concrete design options with trade-offs — not a single recommendation with assumed requirements. You choose the direction.
4

The agent presents the design in sections for your approval

Rather than dumping a wall of spec text, the agent presents the design in short, digestible sections and waits for your sign-off on each. When you approve, it saves the spec to a file.
5

The agent writes a detailed implementation plan

The writing-plans skill produces a task list where every item is scoped to 2–5 minutes of work, includes exact file paths, complete code, and explicit TDD steps. No placeholders.
6

Execution begins with subagents and strict TDD

The subagent-driven-development and test-driven-development skills run together during implementation. Each task gets a fresh subagent context. Tests come before code, every time.

​
Manually invoking a skill

Skills are designed to activate automatically, but you can also invoke them by name if you want to jump directly into a specific workflow.
Use the Skill tool. In your conversation, you can direct the agent:
Or the agent will invoke it via the Skill tool directly when it detects the context matches.

​
Verify the agent is following skills

After your first session, look for these signs that Superpowers is working:
  • The agent asks questions before writing code — brainstorming is active.
  • The agent writes a failing test before any implementation — TDD is active.
  • The agent announces which skill it’s using before beginning a workflow.
  • The agent blocks on critical review findings rather than moving forward.
If the agent jumps straight to writing code without asking any questions, skills may not be loading. Run Tell me about your superpowers to verify installation, or check the troubleshooting section in the installation guide.

​
Next steps

The Workflow

Understand the full seven-step development loop from idea to merged branch.

Skills Reference

Explore every skill: TDD, debugging, subagent orchestration, code review, and more.