Superpowers Plugin Review: Claude Code's Best Plan Mode Extension

Description

I procrastinated a feature for a year. Then the Superpowers plugin for Claude Code built it in three hours. Here's exactly what happened, what worked, and where it falls short. Superpowers is a free, open-source Claude Code plugin with over 58,000 GitHub stars. It enforces a senior engineer's methodology: brainstorm first, plan second, execute third, with mandatory TDD at every step. Unlike previous spec-driven frameworks, it's built directly on Claude Code's native features - skills, hooks, sub-agents, and the task list. I tested it on a real project: an automated content pipeline for ReactLibs.dev that fetches newsletters, extracts trending libraries, writes tutorial articles, generates images, and publishes. A previous attempt with Task Master AI failed completely. Superpowers asked the right questions during brainstorming, produced a solid architecture, and got the pipeline working - though not without debugging along the way. In this video I cover installation, the three-phase workflow, a full real-world walkthrough, when to use Superpowers vs regular plan mode, and honest limitations including token consumption and TDD enforcement. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 0:51 What Is Superpowers 2:11 Installation 2:45 The Core Workflow 5:10 The Real Project 6:13 Testing and Debugging 7:45 When to Use Superpowers vs Plan Mode 8:40 Honest Limitations 9:34 Verdict 🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES Superpowers Plugin (GitHub) https://github.com/obra/superpowers Claude Code https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code ReactLibs.dev https://reactlibs.dev Join the Discord Community https://discord.gg/PKgAUuGnGG Follow on X/Twitter https://x.com/thegraytcat 🐱 THE GRAY CAT AI meets code. Building next-generation software with modern AI tooling. Covering AI IDEs, Claude Code, MCP integrations, and TypeScript/Node.js development. New videos every week. Subscribe and hit the bell!