Superpowers for GPT-5.6

A lean, newcomer-safe Superpowers profile built specifically for Codex CLI.

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This repository is a Codex-native edition of obra/superpowers, tailored for the GPT-5.6 family.

We reviewed and optimized all 13 Superpowers skills for GPT-5.6 against OpenAI’s official prompting guidance for GPT-5.6. The resulting prompt stack keeps outcomes, constraints, evidence, completion criteria, approval boundaries, and validation explicit while removing unnecessary process overhead.

Current measured profile

Measured on 2026-07-15 with the repository context-budget validator and wc -w; the upstream baseline remains pinned to commit d884ae0.

Install and quick start

This repository contains a bundle of 13 skills. Install each directory directly under skills/superpowers as a separate skill; the parent directory is not itself a skill.

Install manually

The following setup works in macOS, Linux, WSL, and Git Bash. It keeps the clone outside the discovery directory, then symlinks each skill into the Codex user skills directory:

set -eu

repo="$HOME/.agents/superpowers-gpt-5.6"
skills_dir="$HOME/.agents/skills"

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/eagleagentic/superpowers-gpt-5.6.git "$repo"
mkdir -p "$skills_dir"

for skill in "$repo"/skills/superpowers/*; do
  [ -f "$skill/SKILL.md" ] || continue
  target="$skills_dir/$(basename "$skill")"
  if [ -e "$target" ] || [ -L "$target" ]; then
    echo "Refusing to overwrite existing skill: $target" >&2
    exit 1
  fi
done

for skill in "$repo"/skills/superpowers/*; do
  [ -f "$skill/SKILL.md" ] || continue
  ln -s "$skill" "$skills_dir/$(basename "$skill")"
done

The preflight check stops before creating any skill links when a same-named installation already exists.

Ask an AI to install it

Paste this into Codex:

Use $skill-installer to install every direct child directory containing SKILL.md from
https://github.com/eagleagentic/superpowers-gpt-5.6/tree/main/skills/superpowers.
Install all 13 skills; do not install skills/superpowers as a single skill.

Verify and update

Open /skills and confirm that the 13 skills appear, then invoke $using-superpowers in a new turn. Codex detects newly installed skills automatically; restart Codex if they do not appear.

For a manual installation, update the clone with:

git -C "$HOME/.agents/superpowers-gpt-5.6" pull --ff-only

The symlinks continue to point at the updated skill directories.

Why this repository exists

Our team initially used obra/superpowers directly. In our day-to-day Codex CLI and GPT-5.6 family workflows, we observed noticeably slower iteration: mandatory skill activation, longer instructions, and fixed process chains added coordination latency and token overhead. This is an account of our practical experience in those workflows, not a general latency benchmark across every platform.

We created this tailored edition to keep the upstream engineering disciplines that improve outcomes while fitting the capabilities Codex already provides natively. Its instructions are compressed, and its router enforces a lightweight core loop for every non-mechanical implementation while loading extra process skills only when risk justifies them. The 13 runtime SKILL.md files contain 2,691 words versus 18,516 upstream—a reduction of 85.5%.

The key difference: using-superpowers still starts with every conversation. It enforces a mandatory lightweight implementation loop—not a universal durable-artifact chain.

Delegation boundary: Codex Ultra provides native subagent delegation by default, so this bundle removes its separate agent-dispatch skills and templates instead of duplicating Codex’s orchestration layer.

Why this edition

Compared with obra/superpowers

The comparison is pinned to upstream commit d884ae0. Counts were remeasured with wc -w across the 13 runtime SKILL.md files on 2026-07-15: 2,691 words here versus 18,516 upstream.

Explore the skills

• Read the English skill guide or Traditional Chinese guide.
• Browse the tailored bundle in skills/superpowers.
• Review the always-on router in using-superpowers.

Validate the context budget after changing the bundle:

bash skills/superpowers/check-context-budget.sh

The sync script protects this tailored profile and requires an explicit --replace-tailored flag before replacing it with upstream skills.

Upstream credit

This project is adapted from Jesse Vincent’s obra/superpowers. The narrower Codex focus, adaptive routing policy, compressed instructions, and Codex-specific tooling are what make this edition a better fit for the GPT-5.6 family.