Claude Code Skills & Superpowers Plugins

Claude Code becomes significantly more powerful when you extend it with skills — specialized capability modules that change how it approaches specific tasks. The Superpowers ecosystem provides a collection of community and official skills that you can install with a single settings change. This guide covers what is available, how to install skills, and how to write your own.

What You'll Learn

• What the Superpowers skill ecosystem is and why it exists
• How to install skills via settings.json
• Overview of available skills and what each does
• How skills are loaded into Claude Code sessions
• How to write a basic custom skill

What Is the Superpowers Ecosystem?

Claude Code has a plugin architecture that lets you load additional instruction modules — called "skills" — into your sessions. When a skill is loaded, Claude Code reads its instructions and applies them throughout the session. Think of skills as pre-written expert prompts that are automatically applied without you having to re-explain them each time.

The Superpowers project is the main community hub for Claude Code skills. It provides:

• A collection of high-quality skills for common development tasks
• A standard format for writing custom skills
• A skill registry for discovery

Skills can be loaded globally (always active) or per-project (via CLAUDE.md or settings).

Installing Skills via settings.json

Skills are configured in your Claude Code settings file:

• macOS/Linux: ~/.claude/settings.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\claude\settings.json

Basic plugin configuration:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "tdd",
      "source": "superpowers/tdd",
      "auto_load": true
    },
    {
      "name": "brainstorm",
      "source": "superpowers/brainstorm",
      "auto_load": false,
      "trigger": "/brainstorm"
    }
  ]
}

auto_load: true means the skill is always active. auto_load: false with a trigger means you invoke it with a slash command.

Install from a local file:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "my-custom-skill",
      "source": "file:///Users/username/.claude/skills/my-skill.md"
    },
    {
      "name": "community-skill",
      "source": "file:///Users/username/.claude/skills/community-debugging.md"
    }
  ]
}

Note: Check the Superpowers documentation for the latest community skill templates and remote URLs.

🇮🇳 India Note: The Superpowers community includes several Indian developers. If you build a useful skill for Indian development contexts (GST API integration, Aadhaar verification patterns, Indian payment gateway integration), contributing it to the community is a great way to build your developer reputation.

Available Skills Overview

TDD (Test-Driven Development)

What it does: Activates a test-first workflow. Claude Code writes tests before implementation, ensures tests pass after changes, and maintains test coverage throughout the session.

Best for: Backend APIs, utility functions, anything where correctness is critical.

How it changes behavior: Before implementing any new function, Claude Code automatically writes failing tests first, then implements to make them pass. It will refuse to skip tests.

Brainstorm

What it does: Activates a structured brainstorming mode. Instead of immediately generating solutions, Claude Code explores multiple approaches, weighs tradeoffs, and presents options before choosing.

Best for: Architecture decisions, feature planning, approaching complex problems.

How it changes behavior: When you describe a problem, Claude Code generates 3-5 different approaches with pros/cons of each, then recommends one with justification.

Debugging

What it does: Activates a systematic debugging protocol. Works through problems methodically — isolate, hypothesize, test, verify — rather than immediately suggesting changes.

Best for: Hard bugs, intermittent failures, performance problems.

Writing Plans

What it does: Before executing any substantial code change, Claude Code creates a written plan, presents it for review, and only proceeds after confirmation.

Best for: Large refactors, unfamiliar codebases, when you want to review before execution.

Code Review

What it does: Provides structured code review with consistent categories (correctness, security, performance, maintainability) and severity ratings.

Documentation

What it does: Generates comprehensive documentation for code — JSDoc/docstrings, README sections, API documentation — following documentation best practices.

How Skills Are Loaded

When Claude Code starts a session:

1. It reads ~/.claude/settings.json
2. Fetches all plugin sources listed (from file paths or URLs)
3. Prepends each skill's content to the system context
4. If auto_load: false, skills wait for their trigger command

The skill content itself is just Markdown with structured instructions. Claude Code reads these instructions and applies them throughout the session.

When you trigger a skill with /brainstorm, Claude Code:

1. Activates the brainstorm skill instructions for the session
2. Applies them to your next request
3. The skill remains active until you /end-brainstorm or start a new session

Writing a Basic Custom Skill

Skills are written in Markdown. Here is a simple example — a skill that enforces Indian coding standards:

File: ~/.claude/skills/india-standards.md

# India Development Standards Skill

## Purpose
Apply Indian market and tech standards to development tasks.

## Rules to Apply
When writing code or reviewing code, always consider:

### Currency and Locale
- Always use ₹ (INR) for currency display, not $
- Use Indian number formatting: 1,00,000 (not 100,000) for display
- Default timezone: Asia/Kolkata (IST, UTC+5:30)
- Date format: DD/MM/YYYY for user-facing dates

### Payment Integration
- When suggesting payment implementation, prefer Razorpay or PayU for India
- Include UPI as a payment option alongside cards
- GST calculation: 18% for software services, 12% for goods (verify specific rate)

### Localization
- When building user-facing text, flag strings that need translation for Hindi
- Phone number format: +91 followed by 10 digits
- PIN code format: 6 digits (not zip code)

### Infrastructure
- When suggesting cloud regions, default to ap-south-1 (Mumbai AWS) or Central India (Azure)

## Activation
Say "I am applying India Development Standards" at the start of each session.

Register it in settings.json:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "india-standards",
      "source": "file:///Users/username/.claude/skills/india-standards.md",
      "auto_load": true
    }
  ]
}

Tips for Working with Skills

Do not load too many auto-load skills. Each skill adds to the context window. 2-3 auto-load skills are fine; 10+ may cause inconsistent behavior as context fills up.

Use project-specific skills in CLAUDE.md. For team projects, include skill instructions directly in CLAUDE.md rather than requiring each developer to configure their personal settings.

Test skills on small tasks first. Before relying on a new skill for important work, test it on a simple task to verify it behaves as expected.

Contribute back. If you write a skill that proves valuable, share it with the community. Open-source skill contributions build reputation and help others.

Official Resources

• Claude Code Documentation — Anthropic's official docs
• Claude Code GitHub — Official Claude Code repository
• Claude Code Settings Reference — Full settings.json schema
• Anthropic Discord — Community for Claude Code users
• Claude Code Examples — Official examples including skill templates