GitHub Trending: obra/superpowers — an agentic SDLC your agent actually follows

If there's a theme this week it's agent discipline, and obra/superpowers is its fullest expression: not a tool, a *methodology* — a composable set of agent skills that turn 'build me a thing' into spec → plan → red/green TDD → reviewed subagent execution → clean branch finish. 312,671 stars, 5,565 of them this week — it's the biggest project on this page by a wide margin.

The basic workflow

• brainstorming — activates before building; draws out what you actually want and why, then plays its understanding back for correction.
• using-git-worktrees — after design approval, isolates the work on a branch and verifies a clean test baseline.
• writing-plans — breaks work into 2–5 minute tasks with exact file paths, complete code, and verification steps.
• subagent-driven-development or executing-plans — fresh subagent per task with review after each, or inline execution with one final branch review.
• test-driven-development — hard RED-GREEN-REFACTOR enforcement; deletes code written before tests.
• requesting-code-review and finishing-a-development-branch — severity-ranked review, merge/PR/keep decision workflow.

Why it's trending this week

Agents are eager to be agreeable and lazy about process; superpowers is the discipline layer that makes them behave like a careful senior engineer instead. It works in Claude Code, Codex CLI/App, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, Grok, OpenCode, Pi, Qwen, Hermes, Muse, Antigravity — one repo, every harness, and the skills trigger automatically so you never think about it.

Who it's for

• Anyone whose agent keeps jumping straight to code for things that needed design first.
• Solo devs who want disciplined TDD without the human willpower cost.
• Teams standardizing how agents behave across many repos and harnesses.

What to know upfront

• Install path differs per harness — Claude Code: /plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official; Codex/others have equivalents in their marketplaces; see the repo's install matrix.
• By Jesse Vincent and Prime Radiant. MIT licensed. Commercial support available at [email protected].
• The skills include subagent-driven-development by design — it's genuinely more expensive in tokens, deliberately. Use it when the work justifies it, not for one-line fixes.

Honest take: superpowers is opinionated all the way down — it will make your agents write tests first and push back on your design. That's the point. If you don't want that, it's not for you. Repository: github.com/obra/superpowers.