Developers who run Claude Code as a "dev team" instead of a single assistant install the same short list of skills: a planning gate, a subagent-driven build loop, a code-review pass, a debugger, and frontend plus MCP-building specialists. The pattern is one orchestration skill fanning work out to focused subagents, and the install counts show which of those subagents people keep.
That "132 agents, 159 commands, 25 MCPs" screenshot going around is the flashy version of this. Under the hood it is mostly a handful of skills doing the heavy lifting, plus OpenAI shipping a plugin that runs Codex inside Claude Code, so the two agents can review each other's work. Here is the stack, ranked by how many developers actually installed each piece.
What a Claude Code dev team actually is
A single agent holds one thread and loses the plot on anything longer than a few files. The dev-team setup splits the work: one orchestrator reads intent and delegates, subagents each own a slice (build this, review that, debug the other thing), and the results come back to the main thread. You are not running 132 personalities. You are running a few reliable roles, over and over.
The skills below are the roles. Numbers come from the Skillselion catalog, ranked by real installs.
The stack, ranked by installs
1. frontend-design (anthropics/skills) - 628,875 installs
The most-installed skill in this whole space, and for good reason: it is the teammate you hand UI work to. It carries taste and layout conventions so the agent stops shipping generic scaffolding. If your dev team ships anything a human looks at, this is the front-end seat.
2. brainstorming (obra/superpowers) - 261,134 installs
The planning gate. It refuses to let the agent write code until the design is approved, one question at a time. This is the skill that turns "sounds reasonable" into an actual spec, and it is why Superpowers-style setups feel less chaotic than raw prompting.
3. systematic-debugging (obra/superpowers) - 173,346 installs
Reproduce, minimise, hypothesise, fix, regression-test. It is the on-call teammate you route a failing test to instead of asking the main thread to guess. Pairs naturally with the review step below.
4. using-superpowers (obra/superpowers) - 171,091 installs
The orchestration meta-skill. It is the layer that knows which other skill to reach for, so the main agent behaves like a lead handing tasks out rather than doing everything itself. This is the closest single install to the "turn one bot into a team" idea.
5. requesting-code-review (obra/superpowers) - 155,120 installs
The reviewer seat. It runs a review pass as a separate step with its own standards, which is exactly the slot OpenAI's Codex-in-Claude-Code plugin slides into: let Codex read the diff Claude just wrote. Two models, one review loop.
6. subagent-driven-development (obra/superpowers) - 135,061 installs
The build loop itself, the one that spawns focused subagents per task. This is the literal "dev team" pattern, and 135k installs say a lot of people are running it rather than talking about it.
7. mcp-builder (anthropics/skills) - 85,298 installs
The MCP question people ask most: not "which MCP do I install" but "how do I build one for my own stack." This is that teammate. It writes the server so the rest of your team gets a new tool to call.
8. workflow-orchestration-patterns (wshobson/agents) - 8,946 installs
Lower count, but pointed: the patterns layer for wiring multi-step agent workflows, from the wshobson/agents pack that a lot of these setups pull from. Worth it once your team has more than three roles talking to each other.
Where the Codex plugin fits
OpenAI's codex-plugin-cc runs Codex as an agent inside Claude Code. In a dev-team setup it is not a replacement, it is another seat: Claude plans and builds, Codex reviews or takes the rescue pass, and the code-review skill above is the natural handoff point. If you already run requesting-code-review, wiring Codex in is a small step, not a rebuild.
How to read these numbers
Install count is a rough vote. It does not mean a skill is best for your repo, it means a lot of developers kept it. Treat the top of this list as a worth-installing shortlist and try the ones that map to roles you actually need. A two-person "team" (build plus review) covers most days.
I run Skillselion, the directory these counts come from: live catalog, refreshed daily from skills.sh, GitHub and MCP registries, ranked by real installs. If you want the full ranked list for a specific role, browse the skills catalog. Independent project, not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI or Cursor.
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