I Tried 28 Claude Code Skills. Here Are the 5 I Kept

Description and use

The author tested 28 Claude Code skills and kept five that add unique value while reducing context consumption.

Problem

Choosing which Claude Code skills to keep when many add similar functionality and consume context tokens.

Outcome

Retaining five focused skills reduced context consumption while preserving distinct benefits such as minimal code output, terse communication, codebase graphing, plan refinement, and UI design support.

Workflow

• 1. Install each skill via the appropriate command (e.g., /plugin marketplace add …).
• 2. Test the skill’s effect on code generation, output terseness, knowledge graph creation, plan refinement, or UI design.
• 3. Measure impact on code length, token usage, runtime speed, or design output.
• 4. Compare results to baseline without the skill.
• 5. Keep the skill if it provides measurable benefit and does not add unnecessary context.
• 6. Remove the skill if it duplicates model behavior or adds significant context.
• 7. Repeat for all 28 skills.

Evidence

The best Claude Code skills, for me, are ponytail, caveman, graphify, grill-me and ui-ux-pro-max: five out of 28 I tried.

Source

Each one does a narrow job the model does not already do well.

Source

The two biggest names I removed were Superpowers and Get Shit Done, now continued as GSD Core.

Source

A lot of what these frameworks did is now built in.

Source