The 6 Claude Code Skills Every AI Agency Should Install First

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Six Claude Code skills form the foundation of a production-ready AI agency workflow. Install these before anything else: Skill Creator, Superpowers, GSD, Ultra Review, Context Mode, and ClaudeMem. Together they cover the full development lifecycle — from planning to review to memory — and cut the time cost of every session that follows.

What Does Each Skill Actually Do?

These six skills cover distinct parts of the workflow and do not overlap. Install all six before starting any client work.

• Skill Creator — describe a skill in plain English and Claude drafts, tests, and packages it as a reusable slash command. This is how you build your library without writing markdown from scratch.
• Superpowers — a senior-developer workflow that enforces plan-before-code, isolated environments, tests before implementation, and two-stage review. Based on patterns from GitHub repositories with 150,000+ stars.
• GSD (Get Stuff Done) — spawns a fresh sub-agent per task. Prevents context rot, which is the gradual degradation that happens when one long session handles too many unrelated tasks. Each task starts clean.
• Ultra Review — runs parallel cloud review agents against your code with near-zero false positives. Finds real issues, not noise.
• Context Mode — compresses session context from 315KB to 5KB per session through intelligent summarisation. Keeps sessions running longer without hitting context limits.
• ClaudeMem — persistent memory across sessions. Decisions, preferences, and client-specific context survive between conversations.

Which Skill Has the Biggest Immediate Impact?

Superpowers. The plan-before-code discipline it enforces changes the quality of every output from the first session. Most Claude Code mistakes happen because implementation starts before the approach is clear. Superpowers makes planning non-negotiable.

Install Superpowers first and use it for one full day before adding the others.

The difference is visible immediately: tasks that previously required two or three rounds of correction start completing correctly on the first pass. The planning step costs two minutes and saves ten.

How Does GSD Prevent Context Rot?

Context rot happens when a session handles too many tasks sequentially. By the twentieth task, the context window contains output from all the previous ones — build logs, file contents, error messages, intermediate reasoning. That accumulated noise degrades the quality of Claude's responses on current tasks.

GSD solves this by spawning a fresh sub-agent for each task. The sub-agent gets a clean context with only what it needs for the current task. It completes the task and reports back. The main session stays light.

Each task gets a fresh context. Each task gets the model's full attention.

What Is Ultra Review and When Do You Use It?

Ultra Review runs multiple parallel review agents against a pull request or code change. Each agent reviews independently, with no shared context between them. The results are aggregated and deduplicated — if only one agent flags an issue, it is probably noise. If multiple agents flag it independently, it is real.

Use Ultra Review before any significant merge: a new feature, a refactor, a security-sensitive change. Run it at the end of a session when you would normally do a manual review. It is faster and catches issues that code review misses because the reviewers share context with the implementer.

How Do You Install All Six Skills?

Each skill is a markdown file that goes in your .claude/skills/ directory. Download each one from its source repository and copy it to that folder. Run /init to register the new skills. They are available as slash commands immediately in any new session.

Use Skill Creator first — it lets you build additional skills through conversation rather than writing markdown from scratch. Once Skill Creator is installed, every future skill you need can be built in minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do these skills work with the Claude Code CLI or only with the VS Code extension?

Both. Skills are markdown files that Claude Code reads regardless of interface. They work identically in the CLI, the VS Code extension, and the JetBrains plugin. The slash commands you create work the same way in every environment.

How does ClaudeMem store memory and where does it save?

ClaudeMem writes memory to a file in your project or home directory — the specific path depends on your configuration. It stores structured notes from each session: decisions made, preferences stated, client-specific context. At the start of each new session, Claude reads the memory file and has that context available without you re-explaining it.

Can you build your own version of these skills from scratch?

Yes. Each skill is a markdown file describing a workflow. If you understand what the skill does, you can write an equivalent. The advantage of the existing skills is that they are already tuned — the prompts produce consistent results across different projects and codebases. Building from scratch means iterating until you get the same consistency.

Does Ultra Review require a paid plan beyond the base Claude subscription?

Ultra Review uses cloud review agents which consume API credits. The cost depends on the size of the code being reviewed and the number of parallel agents. For most pull requests — a few hundred lines of changes — the cost is a few cents per review. Check the Ultra Review documentation for current pricing details.

Watch Nate's full skills walkthrough: Nate Herk on YouTube

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