claude skills
The Five Claude Skills Worth Keeping
marketingskills, Anthropic's frontend-design skill, Superpowers, Anthropic's own document skills, and Caveman. What each one actually fixes, what it costs, and the real install command from each README.
I wrote up the five tools I run through Claude Code a few weeks back, the ones that give it eyes, ears and hands. Skills are a different layer. A tool hands Claude a new capability. A skill changes how it behaves with the capabilities it already has, so it doesn't write every ad the same way, doesn't build every page the same way, doesn't jump straight into code before it has checked what you asked for. Tools give it hands. Skills give it habits.
The five: marketingskills so the copy stops reading like every other AI ad, Anthropic's own frontend-design skill so the page stops looking like every other AI page, Superpowers so it plans before it builds, Anthropic's own document skills so the output is a real Word, PDF or Excel file instead of something you paste in by hand, and Caveman so you stop hitting the usage limit as fast. All five are free, and every one installs in a single command.
How did I pick these five?
None of these are things I built. Four of the five are open source projects run by people who have never heard of me, and the fifth is Anthropic's own. I started from the most-starred agentic skill on GitHub and worked down from there, then narrowed to the ones that fix a problem I recognise from running Claude every day.
Two of them are already producing real output in my own work. The ad copy and the page look you would have seen from my account this week both ran through marketingskills and frontend-design. The other three are newer additions to my own setup, installed and tried against real tasks rather than years of daily-driver history, and I would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.
One number was worth checking properly before I repeated it: Superpowers, the plan-before-you-build skill at position three below, sits at 282,918 stars on GitHub as of this week, ahead of anything else on this list by a wide margin. That's a real, verifiable number, not an installs count (GitHub doesn't publish those), but it is the most-starred Claude skill by a long way, which is close enough to "most people are running it" that I'm comfortable saying so.
The five, at a glance
| Skill | Best for | Price | The one gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|
| marketingskills | Ad copy, pages and SEO that don't read AI-generated | Free, MIT | It's over 50 skills bundled together, not one; you still have to know which to invoke |
| frontend-design | A page that stops defaulting to the grey AI look | Free, Apache 2.0 | Installs bundled with 11 other Anthropic example skills, not standalone |
| Superpowers | Making Claude plan and check before it writes code | Free, MIT | The planning step is a genuine detour before anything gets built |
| Document skills (docx, pdf, xlsx, pptx) | Real Word, PDF, Excel and PowerPoint files, not paste-in | Free to use, source-available (not open source) | Already built into Claude.ai; installing it as a skill mostly matters for Claude Code |
| Caveman | Shorter replies, so you burn through the usage limit slower | Free, MIT | Only shortens what Claude writes back, not what it reads |
Checked 8 September 2026.
1. marketingskills writes like an actual marketer
It's a library of more than 50 individual skills for a coding agent, covering the whole marketing job: copywriting, CRO, SEO, cold email, pricing, and more, built by Corey Haines, a working marketer, not a developer building a toy for developers. Every skill in the library checks a shared product-marketing file first, so it knows your product and your audience before it writes a word.
The job it does in my stack is exactly the reel's complaint. Left to its own defaults, Claude's marketing copy reads like marketing copy from nowhere in particular: safe, broad, forgettable. This skill writes from real conversion frameworks instead, and the ad copy I've shipped through it is the proof, it's already in my own posts this week.
What it costs: nothing. MIT licensed.
The catch is that it's a library of 50-plus skills, and knowing which one to reach for is its own small learning curve. Start with product-marketing, since everything else in the library reads that one first.
Who skips it: anyone not writing marketing copy at all.
How to add it. As a Claude Code plugin:
/plugin marketplace add coreyhaines31/marketingskills
/plugin install marketing-skillsOr without the plugin system: npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills -a claude-code, which drops the files straight into .claude/skills/.
2. frontend-design kills the grey AI look
This one is Anthropic's own, published as one of a dozen example skills in its public skills repository. It doesn't generate a design for you so much as it names the AI-generated tells before Claude can fall into them: the cream-and-terracotta look, black backgrounds with one bright accent, the SaaS card kit where everything gets the same rounded corner and the same soft drop shadow, the tracked-out all-caps eyebrow label, the middle-dot in every meta line. Naming the cliché is most of the fix.
The job in my stack matches the reel exactly: every page defaulting to the same look. This is the skill behind the pages I've been putting out since I started using it, and the difference shows up the first time you compare a "before" page to an "after" one.
What it costs: nothing. Apache 2.0.
The catch: it doesn't stand alone. Anthropic ships it bundled with eleven other example skills (skill-creator, mcp-builder, webapp-testing and more), so adding this one adds all twelve.
Who skips it: anyone who never touches a web page, a deck, or a UI.
How to add it.
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skillsThen, inside Claude Code, choose "Browse and install plugins" and pick frontend-design from the example-skills set if you only want that one active.
3. Superpowers makes it plan before it builds
Superpowers is a full software development methodology built as a stack of composable Claude skills, from Jesse Vincent (obra on GitHub), and it's the most-starred agentic-skills project on GitHub as things stand, at 282,918 stars.
The reel's framing is the honest one: left alone, Claude tends to build the wrong thing fast. Superpowers stops that at the source. Instead of writing code the moment you describe a feature, it asks what you're trying to do, turns the answer into a spec you review in chunks short enough to read, then a plan detailed enough for, in the project's own words, "an enthusiastic junior engineer with poor taste, no judgement, no project context" to follow. Only once you say go does it start building, checking its own work as it goes.
What it costs: nothing. MIT licensed.
The catch: that upfront planning step is a real detour, not a formality. It's built for genuine software features, and it slows down the start of a task on purpose, which feels wrong for a minute until you remember why it's there.
Who skips it: a quick one-off fix, or anyone not writing code at all.
How to add it.
/plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-officialThat's the official Anthropic plugin marketplace listing; no separate marketplace registration needed first.
4. Anthropic's own skills write the file for you
These are the same skills that power Claude's own document creation inside Claude.ai and the API today, published as source-available reference implementations for docx, pdf, xlsx and pptx files.
The job is the one the reel names directly: pasting Claude's answer into Word by hand. With these installed, Claude writes the actual file, a real .docx with headings and page numbers, a real spreadsheet with formulas, a real slide deck, instead of describing what one should contain and leaving the formatting to you.
What it costs: nothing to use, but it isn't open source the way the other four on this list are. Anthropic's own README calls it "source-available," governed by its consumer or commercial terms rather than an MIT or Apache licence, since this is the real code behind a shipped product feature, not a hobby project.
The catch, and it's a useful one: if you're already a paying Claude.ai user, you likely have this without installing anything. Anthropic's own README says these skills are "already available to paid plans." Installing the plugin mostly matters if you're running Claude Code specifically, where nothing is switched on unless you add it.
Who skips it: nobody who ever has to hand someone a real file instead of a chat transcript.
How to add it.
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills5. Caveman shortens what it says back
Caveman, built by Julius Brussee, makes Claude answer in fewer words. Code, commands, file paths and error messages never get shortened, only the explaining prose around them does.
The reel's framing is the one every heavy Claude Code user recognises: you keep hitting the usage limit. The author's own published number, run across ten ordinary coding prompts through the real Claude API, with the skill on and off, is an average output-token reduction of 65 percent, worst case 22 percent, best case 87 percent, depending on how much explaining the answer needed. He's upfront about where that number stops meaning what it sounds like too: it only shortens what Claude writes, not what it reads, and the skill's own instructions cost roughly 1,000 to 1,500 tokens of input on every turn, so the saving across a whole session lands lower than the headline figure. His own maintainer note puts it plainly: "Caveman is a shorter agent, not free money. Measure your own setup before you tell your boss anything."
What it costs: nothing. MIT licensed for the skill itself (there's a separate, optional local proxy under a different licence for people who want to go further).
The catch: on work that was already terse, the overhead can cost more tokens than it saves. Measure before you assume.
Who skips it: anyone who isn't close to a usage limit in the first place.
How to add it.
npx skills add JuliusBrussee/cavemanType /caveman if it doesn't switch on by itself. That's the entire install.
What did I leave out?
Two of the five come bundled with siblings I'm not covering here, and it's worth naming what stayed out and why.
marketingskills ships more than 50 individual skills, not one. I picked the skill the reel's ad-copy problem points at; things like ab-testing, pricing and public-relations sit in the same library for the day I need them, unused for now.
frontend-design arrives bundled with eleven other Anthropic example skills: skill-creator, mcp-builder, webapp-testing, algorithmic-art, and more, because Anthropic ships the whole set as one plugin rather than separately. I'm only covering the one that answers the reel's actual complaint. The others solve problems I don't have yet. I'm not building my own MCP servers or generating algorithmic art for a client this month.
Superpowers, the document skills and Caveman don't bundle the same way. Each installs as the single thing it is, with nothing to skip.
What order do I add them in?
Adding all five on day one is how you end up with skills stepping on each other and no idea which one changed the output. In order:
Superpowers first. It changes how Claude approaches every task that follows, not just one category of work, so everything else below runs inside that habit once it's there.
frontend-design or marketingskills next, whichever matches what you're working on this week. Fastest visible payoff of anything on this list.
The document skills once you actually need to hand someone a real file. Before that day arrives, it's a solution waiting for a problem.
Caveman last, because it's the only one of the five that's purely about the bill, not the output. Add it once you're running Claude enough that the usage limit is the thing slowing you down.
FAQ
How many GitHub stars does Superpowers have?
282,918, as of the week it was checked, 8 September 2026. That makes it the most-starred agentic-skills project on GitHub, ahead of everything else on this list by a wide margin.
Is marketingskills free to install for Claude Code?
Yes, marketingskills is free and MIT licensed. It's a library of more than 50 individual skills built by Corey Haines for the whole marketing job, from copywriting to CRO to cold email.
Do paid Claude.ai plans already include Anthropic's document skills?
Yes, Anthropic's own README says these skills are already available to paid plans, so a paying Claude.ai user likely has this without installing anything. Adding it as a plugin mainly matters if you're running Claude Code specifically, where nothing is switched on unless you add it.
How many tokens does Caveman actually save?
65 percent on average, per the maintainer's own test across ten ordinary coding prompts run through the real Claude API. The worst case in that test was 22 percent and the best case was 87 percent, depending on how much explaining the answer needed.
Which one would I install first if I couldn't code?
I'm not a developer, so this isn't a hypothetical question for me either. If I could only add one and I wasn't writing code, I'd skip Superpowers first, it's built for people shipping software, and I'd skip Caveman too, that's solving a bill problem I don't have yet on light use.
I'd start with marketingskills. It's the one I've actually shipped real output from, and it's the one that touches what a non-coder running a business is doing with Claude in the first place: the ad, the page, the email. frontend-design is the next one in, the day something I build needs to look good to a stranger.
