obra/superpowers: one methodology, sixteen install paths, no shared state

Sixteen install subsections and no configuration shared between them

Getting Started splits installation into sixteen subsections, and the page states the rule before any of them: installation differs by harness, and if you use more than one you install Superpowers separately for each one. Claude Code gets two routes, the official marketplace or the project's own. GitHub Copilot CLI, Factory Droid, and Grok Build CLI each take a single command of their own shape, and Codex is listed twice, once for the desktop app and once for the CLI.

/plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official

/plugin marketplace add obra/superpowers-marketplace

/plugin install superpowers@superpowers-marketplace

copilot plugin marketplace add obra/superpowers-marketplace

grok plugin install superpowers@xai-official --trust

Consequence for the reader: what you install is per harness local state. Adding Superpowers to Claude Code leaves Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode untouched, and no command in the page copies or syncs anything between them. Each harness ends up with its own copy, and the copies can drift to different versions with nothing telling you they have.

Four harnesses install from the default branch rather than a release

Several routes never name a version. Antigravity, Gemini CLI, and Kimi Code all install from the repository address itself, which resolves to the default branch, and the OpenCode route asks you to hand your agent a sentence telling it to fetch an instructions file from refs/heads/main.

agy plugin install https://github.com/obra/superpowers

gemini extensions install https://github.com/obra/superpowers

/plugins install https://github.com/obra/superpowers

Fetch and follow instructions from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/obra/superpowers/refs/heads/main/.opencode/INSTALL.md

Consequence for the reader: on these paths you track main, not a tag. The newest listed release is v6.4.2 from 2026-09-25, but a branch install can hand your agent commits no release has covered, and the page gives no way to pin a commit. The OpenCode path is the sharpest case, since your coding agent is told to follow instructions fetched from a moving branch, and what lands in your configuration is decided by whatever that URL returns at the moment it runs.

Three harnesses get an update command and the rest get silence

Update guidance is uneven in a way that matters over time. Devin CLI pairs an install line with a dedicated update line, Gemini CLI does the same, and Antigravity says to reinstall with the same command to update. The Claude Code, Copilot CLI, Grok Build CLI, Kimi Code, Codex, Cursor, and Factory Droid sections each show how to install and then stop.

devin plugins install obra/superpowers

devin plugins update superpowers

gemini extensions update superpowers

Consequence for the reader: keeping Superpowers current is a per harness chore with a different answer in each tool, and on the harnesses that ship no update line you have to work out on your own whether the marketplace refreshes quietly or pins what you already have. A table of contents entry headed Updating sits below Contributing, but the per harness commands above are the only update guidance spelled out, and the project also keeps RELEASE-NOTES.md and a .version-bump.json at the top level for anyone who wants to diff versions by hand.

The plan is deliberately written for someone who hates tests

The implementation plan is aimed at a reader the page describes as an enthusiastic junior engineer with poor taste, no judgement, no project context, and an aversion to testing, and it says the plan emphasizes red/green TDD, YAGNI, and DRY. That plan comes after a gate: the agent does not jump into writing code, it asks what you are really trying to do, teases a spec out of the conversation, and shows it back in chunks short enough to actually read and digest. Consequence for the reader: the price is your reading time at the spec stage, and what it buys is that the long unattended run later follows something you signed rather than something the agent invented. What the page does not document is any way to shorten or skip that stage, so there is no lighter mode to drop down to when the change is small and obvious.

Hours of autonomy with nothing in the loop that can change the plan

Once you say go, the agent starts a subagent driven development process in which agents work through each engineering task, inspect and review their own work, and continue forward, and the page says an agent working autonomously for a couple of hours at a time without deviating from the plan is not unusual. What that process cannot do is question the plan it was handed. Consequence for the reader: a mistake in the spec is not a pause point, it is a couple of hours of faithful execution of a wrong instruction, and the self review step checks work against the assigned task rather than against what you originally asked for. The loop also leans on tooling the page treats as optional, since on Pi the subagent and task list tools remain optional companion packages while the skills load on their own.

pi install git:github.com/obra/superpowers

pi -e /path/to/superpowers

package.json names one harness while the root carries ten plugin directories

The manifest names the package superpowers at version 6.4.2, marks it as an ES module, and points main at .opencode/plugins/superpowers.js. A pi block declares one extension, ./.pi/extensions/superpowers.ts, and points skills at the ./skills directory. The root then repeats the same idea as directories: .agents/, .claude-plugin/, .codex-plugin/, .cursor-plugin/, .devin-plugin/, .hermes-plugin/, .kimi-plugin/, .muse-plugin/, .opencode/, and .pi/, alongside hooks/, tests/, scripts/, index.js, gemini-extension.json, a .pre-commit-config.yaml, a .version-bump.json, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, and RELEASE-NOTES.md. Consequence for the reader: one tree has to satisfy sixteen install shapes, so every edit to a skill has to land in all of them, and the .pre-commit-config.yaml is the only hook the root names. The page gives no npm install line, and nothing in the tree documents publishing the package to a registry, so the manifest describes intent rather than offering a dependency you can add.

MIT and a shell primary language sit next to a sales inbox

The project is MIT licensed, its primary language is recorded as Shell, and it is not archived, with the last push dated 2026-09-27 and three releases listed: v6.4.2 on 2026-09-25, v6.4.1 on 2026-09-19, and v6.3.0 on 2026-08-12. Enterprise readers are pointed at [email protected] for commercial support, additional tooling, and managed spending. Consequence for the reader: the MIT grant is the whole of what you get without a conversation, and anything beyond it is a sales arrangement rather than a channel inside the repository, so a team that expects paid support to arrive through issues or discussions will not find it. The table of contents also ends with a section headed Visual companion telemetry, listed after License, which puts it last in the list rather than in the install walkthrough a new reader stops at.

Editorial conclusion

Superpowers fits teams that want their coding agent to stop and produce a spec before it touches code, and that use one harness at a time. It does not fit a quick single file fix, and it does not fit a reviewer who expects the agent to abandon a plan when reality contradicts it, because the plan is meant to be followed for hours without deviation. Before you adopt it, check three things in your own setup: whether your harness has a named update path, since three of them are given one and the rest are not; whether you are willing to install from the default branch rather than a release tag; and whether the subagent and task list tooling your workflow relies on is actually present, since on Pi those remain optional companion packages.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository
3. Release notes