Superpowers vs Grill‑Me: Which AI Coding Assistant Wins the Race?

Problem: build a web‑based endless‑runner game using Claude Code.

Experiment Setup

The same requirement was fed to both grill‑me and superpowers with Claude Code (model Claude fable 5). Commands used: /grill-me and /superpowers:brainstorming.

grill‑me Process and Result

grill‑me asked 12 detailed questions, each answered mostly with “yes”. One question about art style was rejected, leading to a night‑time aesthetic. After 16 minutes of questioning, it produced a design consensus overview and generated a 51 KB index.html in about 30 minutes. The final game shows blue sky, white clouds, a red‑hatted character, and simple controls. No additional files, git history, or documentation were created.

npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills

superpowers Process and Result

superpowers asked only four high‑level questions (view, target device, extra features, tech stack). The art‑style decision was embedded as a default note. After the brief interview, it suggested three technical solutions, then output a full design spec, file structure, 10 implementation tasks, 54 unit tests, and a test‑driven development plan. It initialized a git repository, committed 14 changes, and created docs/superpowers/specs/ with the design document. The generated game uses a dark‑night aesthetic, runs for about two hours of work (excluding a stall), and includes a more complex code base with many modules.

/plugin install superpowers@claude-plugins-official

Side‑by‑Side Comparison

Questions: 12 vs 4.

Approvals: 13 vs 8.

Artifacts left: code only vs code + tests + design docs + git history.

Time: ~32 min vs ≈2 h.

Analysis

The core difference is the purpose of the questions. grill‑me forces the user to clarify every detail, keeping ownership of the work. superpowers gathers only the minimum information and fills the rest with defaults, then takes full ownership of the implementation, documentation, and version control.

For quick prototypes or when you want to retain full control, grill‑me is lightweight and non‑intrusive. For larger, maintainable projects that require a paper trail, testing, and structured hand‑off, superpowers provides a comprehensive workflow at the cost of added ceremony.

Conclusion

Choose the tool that matches the scale of your task: grill‑me for fast, low‑overhead experiments; superpowers for serious, collaborative development.