Module 5: Skills & Commands

⏱️ Duration: 30 minutes

Learning Objectives

After this module, you will be able to:

• Understand what skills and commands are
• Use built-in skills like /commit effectively
• Discover and use the Superpowers skill framework
• Know when to use skills vs custom prompts
• Invoke skills that transform your entire workflow

Key Concepts

What are Skills?

Skills = Skills guide AI models on how to perform certain tasks

Commands = Shortcuts to trigger specific actions (/commit, /review, /plan)

Think of skills as expert knowledge encoded into reusable workflows. Instead of remembering the right prompts and steps, you invoke a skill that knows the best practices.

Some things to know about skills:

1. A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file, and optionally some additional files like scripts
2. A skill can be invoked explicitly by the user, or picked up by the model when needed.
3. Each Skill has a description which the model will read to determine if it should use the skill or not. The rest of the markdown file is only included in the context of the model if the model decides to use the skill. If the description does not match want the model understands that the user is asking for, then the skill won’t be invoked.