chief-of-staff Skill (Matt Pocock) for Claude: Run Long Goals

Makes Claude run a long goal as a chief of staff: subagents do the work while Claude keeps a wiki and plans ahead.

Installs: 98K; on skills.sh
Stars: 309.2K; on GitHub
Files: 1; besides SKILL.md
Updated: Nov 2026; last repo commit

chief-of-staff turns one Claude session into a coordinator for a long-running goal. Claude sends all work to background subagents, keeps its own context clear, and records what it learns in a wiki of linked markdown pages that outlives the session. It also suggests recurring schedules and looks for ways to make the environment easier for agents, such as lint rules, coding standards and access to logs.

It is a beta skill in the in-progress folder of Matt Pocock's skills repo, and its frontmatter sets disable-model-invocation, so you call it yourself. It reads four sibling skills for retros, specs, tickets and implementation, so install them with it. The folder bundles no scripts, only an agents/openai.yaml file.

Good for

Developers running a long, multi-step project with agents
People who want agent knowledge kept in a dated wiki
Users of Matt Pocock's other skills

Install chief-of-staff

Claude Code

Copy this prompt.

Install the chief-of-staff skill in Claude Code. Run this command:

npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill chief-of-staff --skill retro --skill to-spec --skill to-tickets --skill implement-spec --skill writing-for-agents --skill setup-matt-pocock-skills --skill tdd --skill code-review

Then check that it loaded and tell me how to use it.

2
Paste it into Claude Code. It shows the change and asks before running it.

Requires Node.js.

chief-of-staff sits in the repo's in-progress folder, which the plugin leaves out, and the in-progress README says to install such skills directly with the skills CLI. It reads retro, to-spec, to-tickets and implement-spec by the path ../<name>/SKILL.md, so they must sit beside it. Those four call others in turn: retro loads writing-for-agents, to-spec and to-tickets and implement-spec point to /setup-matt-pocock-skills, and implement-spec calls tdd and code-review. The list above installs all nine. Do not use the repo plugin for the siblings: plugin skills live in a separate folder, so the ../ paths would not resolve.

From the vendor's docs. Source.

What's in the skill

When it loads

Pursue a long-running goal in a single session by co-ordinating subagents.

Sections in SKILL.md

Schedules
Subagents
Wiki
Write history, not the present
Procedures
Strategic View

Key facts

Author: Matt Pocock (mattpocock)
Repository: mattpocock/skills
Installs on skills.sh: 98,039 (crawled 2026-11-02)
GitHub stars: 309,237 (whole repo)
License: MIT
Last repo commit: 2026-11-01
Files in the skill folder: 2 files: SKILL.md and agents/openai.yaml. No scripts.
skills.sh audits: Gen Agent Trust Hub: pass, Socket: pass, Snyk: pass

What it includes

Suggests recurring schedules that help reach the goal, if your harness allows
Schedules
Sends all work to fresh-context background subagents, with sparse messages to them
Subagents
Keeps dated, linked markdown pages and an index.md; ingest, query and lint operations
Write · Wiki
Runs a retro on about one in five subagent sessions, worst ones first
Retro (../retro/SKILL.md)
Chains to-spec, to-tickets and implement-spec for bigger pieces of work
Large chunks of work
On every task, looks for ways to improve the agents' environment
Strategic view

From the official docs

Permissions

Medium risk

It runs a long session where background subagents do the work and Claude writes wiki files, so a wrong turn can touch many files. Start it in a repo you can roll back, and agree the wiki location before it writes.

What it can do

Read your data
Create and change things
Delete things
Read-only mode

Watch out for

It runs work in background subagents
SKILL.md says all work should be done in subagents. Watch what they change, and check the repo with git before you merge.
It writes a wiki to disk
If no shared wiki exists, Claude must agree a location with you before the first write. Choose a folder outside your source tree if you do not want it committed.
It decides which retro findings to pursue
In place of retro's last step, SKILL.md has Claude decide for itself which candidates are worth pursuing, then pursue them. Tell it to ask first if you want to approve each one.
Large work publishes a spec and tickets
SKILL.md says to write a spec and tickets and publish both to the issue tracker, then implement them. Check which tracker is configured before you start.

Questions

What does chief-of-staff do?

It makes Claude coordinate a long-running goal. All work goes to background subagents, Claude keeps a wiki of dated markdown pages, suggests recurring schedules, and looks for ways to improve the environment the agents work in.

Which other skills does it need?

retro, to-spec, to-tickets and implement-spec, which SKILL.md reads by paths like ../retro/SKILL.md, relative to its own folder. They live in the repo's engineering folder. Those four call more skills: retro loads writing-for-agents, to-spec, to-tickets and implement-spec point to /setup-matt-pocock-skills, and implement-spec calls tdd and code-review. The install box lists all nine.

How do I start it?

Its frontmatter sets disable-model-invocation: true, so Claude will not pick it up on its own. Invoke it by name and state the long-running goal.

Is it stable?

No. The repo's in-progress README says these skills are beta and "can change or disappear without warning". The plugin leaves them out, so install this one directly.

Is it safe to run?

It bundles no scripts, only an agents/openai.yaml file. It does tell Claude to run work in background subagents, write wiki pages to a folder (agreeing a location with you first if no shared wiki exists) and decide for itself which retro candidates to pursue. For large work it publishes a spec and tickets to your issue tracker. Try it in a project where agents may edit files.

Where does the wiki go?

Claude looks for a shared wiki first. If there is none, SKILL.md says to agree a location with you before the first write.

Information

updated Nov 2, 2026

Repository: mattpocock/skills
Folder: skills/in-progress/chief-of-staff

mattpocock/skills skills.sh

Sources

Docs, issue trackers and discussions this page is built from.

Show all 7

in-progress README · github.com
chief-of-staff SKILL.md · github.com
retro SKILL.md · github.com
to-spec SKILL.md · github.com
to-tickets SKILL.md · github.com
implement-spec SKILL.md · github.com
skills CLI commands · github.com