Two testing skills · both proven

grilling vs systematic-debugging

Both skills were run through Claude twice: once on a fixed brief without the skill, once with it. The briefs differ because each is written for the job the skill claims to do, so compare each skill against its own baseline, then decide which difference matters for your work.

grilling

Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.

Category: Testing
Source: mattpocock/skills
License: MIT
Proof model: claude-opus-5-5
Brief: “Here is my plan. I want to launch a paid newsletter for independent game developers in six weeks. It will cost $8 a month, come out every Tuesday, and cover marketing tips, funding opportunities and interviews with developers who shipped on Steam. I have 1,200 followers on X and no email list yet. My goal is 500 paying subscribers in the first year. Grill me on this plan, and present the result as a single HTML page: every question you would ask me, in the order you would ask it, why each one matters, and what a weak answer would tell you.”
Skill commit: 5beb35b

Without the skillWith grilling

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Without, runWith grilling, run3 independent runs per side, none selected by hand.

Download the with-skill page

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes

Category: Testing
Source: obra/superpowers
License: MIT
Proof model: claude-opus-5-5
Brief: “A Node.js API returns 500 for about 1 in 200 requests to POST /orders. Logs show 'TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading "id")' at orders.js:48, which reads req.user.id. The route is behind an auth middleware. The failures started after a deploy that added a 30-second cache on the session lookup. Present your diagnosis and fix as a single HTML page: what you checked, in order, the root cause, the code change, and how you would confirm it is fixed.”
Skill commit: bb92a77

Without the skillWith systematic-debugging

⇆

Without, runWith systematic-debugging, run3 independent runs per side, none selected by hand.

Download the with-skill page

We don’t pick a winner for you: the pages are the evidence. Both proofs can be repeated with the brief, model and commit shown above. See alternatives to grilling or alternatives to systematic-debugging.