SMRTR ProgrammingJun 15, 2026Dev.to

The most popular AI coding skills right now

SMRTR summary

A folder of markdown files has somehow become more popular on GitHub than Vue.js. That's the strange reality of "agent skills," a fast-growing category of developer tools that essentially teach AI coding assistants how to think before they type.

The format started quietly at Anthropic as a simple SKILL.md file, but it's exploded into repos with hundreds of thousands of stars. The most-starred, called Superpowers, forces an AI agent to stop, draft a spec, get your approval, and only then write code.

Others take a lighter touch. A community-built file inspired by researcher Andrej Karpathy distills good coding behavior into four ideas: think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes, stay focused.

AWS has entered the space too, releasing an officially supported Agent Toolkit that loads service-specific guidance directly into your coding agent, so it stops guessing at APIs it half-remembers from training.

The advice for anyone curious: read the skill file before installing it. Stars signal popularity, not quality.

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