Superpowers packages a full software-development methodology for coding agents as a set of composable, auto-triggering skills plus bootstrap instructions that make the agent actually use them. Rather than jumping straight into code, an agent equipped with Superpowers first draws out a spec through questions, presents the design in reviewable chunks, produces a detailed implementation plan, and then works through the plan largely autonomously. The skills fire automatically based on what the agent is doing, so the user does not have to invoke them manually.
The core workflow is a sequence of skills, each activating at the appropriate stage:
- brainstorming: refines a rough idea through Socratic questioning and saves a design document
- using-git-worktrees: creates an isolated branch/workspace and verifies a clean test baseline
- writing-plans: breaks work into small tasks, each with exact file paths, code, and verification steps
- subagent-driven-development / executing-plans: dispatches a fresh subagent per task with two-stage review (spec compliance, then code quality), or runs in batches with human checkpoints
- test-driven-development: enforces a strict RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle and discards code written before its test
- requesting-code-review: reviews work against the plan and flags issues by severity
- finishing-a-development-branch: verifies tests and offers merge/PR/keep/discard options
The bundled skills library also covers systematic debugging, verification-before-completion, receiving code review, dispatching parallel agents, and meta-skills for authoring new skills. Its stated philosophy emphasizes test-first development, systematic process over guessing, complexity reduction, and verifying results before declaring success. Superpowers installs as a plugin across many harnesses, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot CLI, Antigravity, Factory Droid, Kimi Code, OpenCode, and Pi, with per-harness installation. An optional visual-companion feature loads a logo from the maintainers server to give a rough usage count; it sends the Superpowers version but no project or prompt data, and can be disabled via an environment variable.
