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Taqui
Taqui

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Don't Write More Prompts. Install These 10 Trending 'Skills' Instead

Devs debate if hype repos beat custom markdown

I found 10 trending skills on GitHub that can boost your agent power a lot, and I had to test them this week :)

Not your skills. Agent Skills. Small folders with a SKILL.md inside that teach your AI agent to do one thing really well, again and again. You write it once, any agent can use it next time.

Today GitHub Trending is full of them. Top 5 are literally all skills repos. I opened each one, read the README, checked stars and use cases. Here is what I found.

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Quick intro from me. I am Taqui, I build web apps with Next.js and TypeScript. I also made Wryte, a small AI blog writer for myself. So I keep an eye on what helps agents build better, not just chat better.

What is a Skill in simple words

A Skill is not a plugin. It is instructions, scripts and resources in a folder. Your agent checks if it needs that skill, loads only that folder, follows the steps.

Anthropic started it. Now Google, Vercel, Cloudflare, Meta, even Prometheus ship one.

Why does it matter for you as a Next.js dev? You stop copying the same prompt in Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. You write the skill once in SKILL.md. That is it :)

Below are 10 trending repos, with real stars, real use cases and links. Save this for later.

1. Cloudflare security-audit-skill - 66K stars, 2,085 today

What I found: This skill turns your coding agent into a security auditor. Six phases: Recon, Coverage-led hunting, Candidate validation, Structured output, Independent record verification, Target-neutral reporting.

It writes findings.json and coverage-ledger.json. Fresh agents try to disprove each finding. That is how Cloudflare built their vulnerability harness.

Use case for you: If you ship auth in Next.js, run this before you push. Even phases 1 and 2 help a lot.

Repo: cloudflare/security-audit-skill

Checkout security-audit-skill

2. Matt Pocock skills - 317K stars, 1,100 today

What I found: Matt Pocock put his real .agents folder in public. Tagline: "Skills for Real Engineers, not vibe coding."

Small, composable skills. Run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once, it asks where you keep tickets and labels.

Use case: Triage, docs, issue planning, the boring parts you repeat every project.

AI Skills for Real Engineers

Checkout mattpocock/skills

3. Anthropic skills - 188K stars, 390 today

What I found: The original repo. It has the skills that power Claude's docx, pdf, pptx and xlsx features. Also creative skills for art, music, design and technical skills for web testing and MCP generation.

Each skill is a folder with SKILL.md. All Apache 2.0.

Use case: Learn what a good skill looks like. Copy the template/ folder to make your own logo, doc or data skill.

Repo: anthropics/skills

Checkout anthropics/skills

4. Google skills - 23.5K stars, 443 today

What I found: Agent Skills for Google products, including Google Cloud. One command installs many: getting started, IAM, AlloyDB, Agent Platform, RAG for enterprise search.

Use case: You build on GCP or use Gemini. Instead of pasting docs into prompts, you install the skill once.

Repo: google/skills

Checkout google/skills

5. Vercel agent-browser - 47K stars, 190 today

What I found: Browser automation CLI for AI agents in Rust. You open a page, get a snapshot with refs like @e1, click, snapshot again. The browser stays open.

Install: npm install -g agent-browser then agent-browser install

Use case: Let your agent browse docs, fill forms, test your Next.js app. I used similar thinking for Wryte experiments, refs are way more stable than CSS selectors :)

Repo: vercel-labs/agent-browser

Checkout agent-browser

6. Meta astryx - 14.7K stars, 96 today

What I found: Open source design system from Meta, agent-ready. React 19 and StyleX, 150+ accessible components, theming, dark mode, CLI. Used internally 8 years across 13,000 apps.

Components can be ejected as full source. No lock-in.

Use case: If you build design systems for agents, this shows how to ship component docs an AI can actually use, not just code.

Astryx Banner

Checkout astryx

7. Sherlock - 101K stars, 1,766 today

What I found: Hunts social accounts by username across 400+ networks. sherlock user123 writes user123.txt.

Use case: Check your own username leaks, or do OSINT if you work in security. Use it responsibly please.

Repo: sherlock-project/sherlock

Checkout Sherlock

8. OpenMausBot - 17.3K stars, 1,955 today

What I found: Open-source Grok Bot alternative with a VM bots can use. It has .claude/skills/ and skills/, plus computer use drivers. Idea: give the agent a real computer, not just text tools.

Use case: Automation that needs a mouse, keyboard and files. Works with Docker or Podman self-hosting.

Repo: milind-soni/OpenMausBot

Checkout OpenMausBot

9. Prometheus - 67.4K stars, 322 today

What it is: Prometheus monitoring and time series database. Collects metrics, evaluates PromQL, alerts when conditions match.

Use case: Your agent needs observability. It now ships .agents/skills so an agent can learn scrape, query and alert without you pasting docs.

Repo: prometheus/prometheus

Checkout Prometheus

10. Ruff and billion-context - 51K + 4.7K stars, 350 + 191 today

I put these two together because both save tokens, which is money.

  • Ruff: Python linter and formatter in Rust, 10 to 100 times faster than Flake8 and Black, 900+ rules.
  • billion-context: Context compression for month-long sessions, 100K window is enough, about 5 times fewer tokens.

Use case: Lint fast, keep context small, ship cheaper AI features.

Repo: astral-sh/ruff and ranxianglei/billion-context

Checkout Ruff

Checkout billion-context

Final thoughts

I do not know which skill will win. That is OK. The point is you can copy one today, learn, and make your agent better this week.

Are you already using a skill in Claude Code or Codex, or still copying prompts by hand? :)

If you want to start, read Anthropic skills and Google skills. Worth a look :)

I'm Taqui, full-stack dev from India building web products with Next.js and TypeScript. I post what I'm learning here and on my portfolio at taqui.in. If this helped, say hi in the comments :)

thanksforreading

Top comments (7)

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ivannovazzi profile image
Ivan Annovazzi •

66k stars on a folder of markdown instructions, no way that's all organic. My bet is none of these survive the month and the skill that sticks is the boring one you write for your own repo's weird deploy steps. Did any of the ten survive your test week?

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taqui profile image
Taqui •

Bro 😂, I think you are outdated

The #1 is really an awesome skill and you are telling organic

The Dev's those have dropped star's on the skill repos are not mad... Try to understand

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pengeszikra profile image
Peter Vivo •

I really don't want to copy propmt or skills also. Because I building the stuff on my own intention.

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paullovelace profile image
Paul Lovelace •

The Cloudflare one is the only entry here I'd actually run before pushing — a fresh agent trying to disprove each finding is the whole idea, everything else is just a checklist with extra steps. My bet is the same as ivannovazzi's though: the skill that sticks is the boring one you write for your own repo's weird deploy steps, not a 66k-star folder. Did any of the ten survive your test week, or is the list already out of date?

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alexshev profile image
Alex Shev •

A skill list becomes more useful when every entry has a boundary as well as a capability. I look for its required inputs, side effects, verification step, and explicit stop condition before installing it. That small contract prevents a collection of impressive prompts from becoming an unreviewable source of authority.

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lin7c profile image
xcl •

The Cloudflare security-audit-skill section stood out to me, especially the idea that fresh agents try to disprove each finding and that the results go into findings.json and coverage-ledger.json. That second-agent check seems like the key part — otherwise an audit skill could just produce a long list of plausible-looking issues. How do you handle it when the fresh agent disagrees with the original finding: is the finding dropped, downgraded, or kept with a note about the disagreement? I am also curious whether phases 1 and 2 alone are enough to catch the common Next.js auth mistakes, or whether most of the value only shows up once the coverage-led hunting in the later phases runs.

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fiwon123 profile image
Felipe Inoue •

Awesome post

I need to learn more about SKILLS, I only recently realized how important it is for each agent to have its own skills. 😀