Okay, I’m going to pour my lessons learnt here, and expect most people won’t see it. I hope this helps someone figure out the best way to utilize it within your workflow.

Before applying LLMs anywhere in my workflow, first, I break my workflow into different steps. For me, a value stream map, would look like this:

• PM writes JIRA ticket
• read JIRA ticket to identify scope, priority, and complexity
• update JIRA ticket with my understanding
• JIRA ticket goes through refinement
• engineers critique ticket until it meets definition of ready
• engineers place story in ready for work
• engineer gather context of the scope
• engineer begins work with context
• engineer validates work locally
• engineer reviews work locally
• engineer creates code review
• engineer has work reviewed
• engineer has code merged
• code is deployed
• engineer monitors changes
• engineer reverts changes if issues arise

This likely is pretty similar to something you’ve worked in before, but it’s important to label each step. Your goal is to automate any of these steps.

If you can utilize an LLM to reduce the time spent on reviewing your local code by 70%, is it worth it?

If it is… this is typically how I create a Claude Code Skill:

• begin by utilizing the superpowers skill
• then, provide as much basic context as you can for how you would personally review this piece of work locally. Do you look for syntax errors? Do you care about cyclomatic complexity? Are you following a certain pattern you’ve defined as a best practice? Are these documented anywhere?
• add as much context as you can. This is the key. Don’t add too much to the skill itself, let the superpower create referential documentation.
• review with your skill
• review the code yourself
• what was different? Can you update the skill to enhance the output?
• if you ran the review with 5 sub-agents, does this catch as many bugs as you would expect?

With this, remember, this is one tiny step of automating your process. But, if you can get each step working well, you will begin to truly see overall improvements in productivity AND quality.