Skill review · by Matt Pocock
Grill Me Claude Skill
The grill me skill for Claude is Matt Pocock's /grill-me, shipped inside his mattpocock/skills repository — 243,000-plus GitHub stars, MIT licensed, last pushed August 2026. It does one thing: instead of writing code, Claude interviews you about a plan, idea, or decision in numbered rounds of questions, each with a recommended answer, until every branch of the decision tree is settled and nothing is silently assumed. It writes no files; the output is a sharper plan and a conversation full of context. One thing to know before installing: grill-me is a two-line alias that calls a bundled "grilling" skill, so copying the grill-me folder alone leaves a dead slash command — install the whole plugin, or at minimum both skills. It is a community skill, not an Anthropic one, and the author's own docs say sessions run about 45 minutes and reward pushback, not nodding along.
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Install
- 1Claude Code, managed route: run claude plugins install mattpocock-skills (or /plugin install mattpocock-skills inside a session). It is in Claude Code's official plugin marketplace, so no marketplace needs adding first and updates arrive automatically.
- 2Editable route, any agent (Claude Code, Codex, others): npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills, then select the skills you want — take both grill-me and grilling, since the former is an alias for the latter. Pick one route; installing both duplicates every skill.
- 3Optionally run /setup-matt-pocock-skills once per repo to configure the wider skill set (issue tracker, labels, docs location). grill-me itself needs no configuration.
- 4Start a fresh conversation, leave plan mode off, and type /grill-me followed by your idea. Claude never invokes it on its own (disable-model-invocation is set).
- 5Claude.ai: upload via Settings → Capabilities → Skills — upload the skills/productivity/grilling folder, since grill-me is only a two-line pointer to it.
What it does
- Round-based interviewing
- Asks the whole "frontier" — every question whose prerequisites are already settled — in one numbered round, each question paired with Claude's recommended answer, then waits for your responses before computing the next round.
- Design-tree mapping
- Models your plan as a decision tree; each answered round pushes the frontier outward and unblocks dependent questions. The session ends only when the frontier is empty and, per the skill's own words, "nothing left silently assumed."
- Fact-finding on its own
- Facts are Claude's job, decisions are yours: when a question needs something from the environment (filesystem, tools), it dispatches a sub-agent to look it up rather than asking you, without blocking the rest of the round.
- Stateless, not code-specific
- Writes no files and needs no repo. The author uses it for features, product direction, business calls, and writing — anything with an unexamined decision tree.
- Confirmation gate
- Will not act on the plan until you confirm a shared understanding has been reached; the deliverable is the resolved conversation itself.
Common questions
- Is grill-me an official Anthropic skill?
- No. It ships in Matt Pocock's personal mattpocock/skills repository under an MIT license. It is listed in Claude Code's official plugin marketplace as mattpocock-skills, but Anthropic does not author or maintain it.
- Does it review or stress-test my code?
- No — it interrogates plans, ideas, and designs before any code exists, and it writes no files. For a variant that reads your codebase and records decisions as ADRs, use grill-with-docs from the same repo.
- How long does a session take?
- The author says about 45 minutes is typical — roughly four rounds and 40–50 questions. If it asks hundreds, your scope was too big; split the work and grill each piece separately.
- Does it work outside Claude Code?
- Yes. npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills installs the same markdown files for Codex and other agents; the skill is model-agnostic. A native Codex plugin is on the repo's roadmap.