News - Matt Pocock Skills 1.3 - retro, implement-spec and pr ship in the plugin

category: AI · date: 2026-10-05 · author: LALA

Matt Pocock released version 1.3 of his skills for coding agents on 2026-10-04 (v1.3.0 and v1.3.1 came out one minute apart, 1.3.1 only adds a small fix in ask-matt). Three skills moved into the Engineering set, so they now ship in the Claude Code plugin, one skill was removed and one file convention was renamed.

retro - new last step of the main flow, after code-review. It looks back at the coding session and suggests changes to the agent's environment instead of the code: navigation pointers, automated checks, coding standards, steering files. A mechanical rule should become a linter rule, a pre-commit hook or a CI job, CODING_STANDARDS.md is kept for judgement calls.
implement-spec - implements a whole spec in one run. It reads the tickets as a task graph, runs implementer subagents in their own worktrees and lands everything on one integration branch, then closes with code-review. The goal is the integration branch, a draft PR opens only when the issue tracker closes work through PRs or you ask for one.
pr - the shape of a pull request body: the smallest visual that makes the change clear, before/after evidence that it works and a merge-danger call (one-way or two-way door plus blast radius).
resolving-merge-conflicts - removed, nothing replaces it. The agent works through a merge or rebase conflict without a dedicated skill.
CONTEXT.md is now GLOSSARY.md - the same for CONTEXT-MAP.md → GLOSSARY-MAP.md. The skills only look for the new names.

Important: if your repository still has a CONTEXT.md from before 1.3, rename it, otherwise the skills will not find your domain docs:

bash

$ git mv CONTEXT.md GLOSSARY.md

Among the smaller fixes: a skill now calls another skill with an explicit "call the Skill tool" instruction, because naming it in prose ("run the /grilling skill") did not load it reliably. This was the most reported problem of grill-with-docs.

Summary1: Main flow in 1.3 = grill → spec → tickets → implement → code-review → retro. The new part is the end: the session should improve not only the code, but also the environment for the next agent session.

If you want to try it, the whole workflow with diagrams is in SDD 03 - Matt Pocock Skills: Quick & Dirty Starter Guide, which already follows v1.3.1.