SkillVerdict
All verdicts

improve-codebase-architecture

Install mattpocock/skills

Scans for shallow modules, writes a visual HTML report to your temp folder, then grills you on one refactor. MIT, no scripts.

Verified · Repo on GitHub

What it does

Finds "deepening opportunities": places where shallow modules could become deep ones that are easier to test and to navigate. It scopes the scan by recent git history unless you name an area, sends a sub-agent with a fresh context to explore, writes a self-contained HTML report with before/after diagrams to your OS temp folder, and then runs the grilling loop on the candidate you pick, updating GLOSSARY.md and offering ADRs as decisions settle.

Who made it / license / last checked

Matt Pocock (mattpocock/skills) · License: MIT (repo LICENSE) · Repo last commit checked: 2026-10-29

Install

claude plugin install mattpocock-skills@claude-plugins-official

From the repo README (Claude Code route; it installs the whole pack, so the skills this one calls come with it). For other agents the README gives npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills -a <agent>. We did not run the installer.

What files / scripts it runs

SKILL.md (6,028 bytes), HTML-REPORT.md (6,641 bytes, the report scaffold) and an agents/openai.yaml display file. No scripts. User-invoked only (disable-model-invocation: true). It reads your git log and code, and the agent writes one HTML file outside the repo and opens it.

Pros

  • Scoped by real change history, not a generic "refactor everything" pass
  • Keeps the repo clean: the report goes to the temp folder
  • Respects existing ADRs instead of re-arguing settled decisions

Cons

  • The report loads Tailwind and Mermaid from public CDNs, so opening it fetches third-party scripts into a page describing your code
  • It leans on three sibling skills (codebase-design, grilling, domain-modeling): install the pack
  • Spawns sub-agents, so it is token-hungry on a big repo

Alternatives

A human architecture review with the same deep-module vocabulary (Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design); tdd from the same pack once the seams are agreed.

Notes

Skills.sh listed it at 1.2M installs (#8) on 30 Oct 2026.

Sources

Verified on 2026-11-04 through the GitHub API: it has had no commit since the 30 Oct check, so the files, sizes and verdict above still hold. Previous check on 2026-10-30, from a fresh clone of the repo (commit a496f55, 2026-10-29) and the skills.sh leaderboard fetched that day. Repo last-commit is a repo date, not a per-skill release date. Install counts are distribution, not quality.