First Move · AI Skills · Mon 20 Jul 2026

The week's winning skills — Monday morning, 20 July

Claude 4.0 Opus and Gemini 2.5 Ultra Lead Week of Major AI Model and Agent Releases

The AI skills landscape saw rapid advancements this week, with major model updates and new agent platforms expanding capabilities across ecosystems.

New here? The 60-second primer

Skills are packaged expertise you install into an AI assistant: Claude Code has skills and plugins (from Anthropic's directory and open git marketplaces), ChatGPT has custom GPTs (the GPT Store), and Google's Gemini has Gems (shareable custom experts). Every rank below comes from captured data — official install counts, GitHub star growth, and the GPT Store's own trending list — not from opinion.

The week

This week brought significant updates across the AI skill ecosystems, underscoring a push for more powerful models and specialized agent capabilities. Anthropic expanded its offerings with the official release of Claude 4.0 Opus on July 15, featuring a 2 million token context window and enhanced native tool use for developers.

Additionally, Anthropic introduced Claude Science on July 12 for specialized research automation, and Claude for Teachers on July 14, providing free premium access to verified U.S. K-12 educators.

On July 20, Claude Fable 5 became standard for Max plan subscribers, and the `/code-review` feature received an ultra tier. Google also advanced its Gemini platform, rolling out Gemini Spark, a 24/7 personal AI agent, to Google AI Ultra subscribers in more regions starting July 17.

Google DeepMind further launched Gemini 2.5 Ultra in an experimental phase on July 15, boasting a 1.8 million token context window and integrated native code execution. OpenAI, while announcing its GPT-5.6 model family on July 9, continued its global rollout this week, offering Sol, Terra, and Luna tiers for varying needs. xAI also contributed to the agent development space by open-sourcing Grok Build on July 17, allowing developers to create and deploy their own AI agents.

Top Claude plugins — official installs

1. Frontend Design

What It Does: Craft production-grade frontends with distinctive design. Generates polished code that avoids generic AI aesthetics.

Installs: 1,081,079

How To Get It: /plugin install frontend-design in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

2. Superpowers

What It Does: Claude learns brainstorming, subagent development with code review, debugging, TDD, and skill authoring through Superpowers.

Installs: 965,863

How To Get It: /plugin install superpowers in Claude Code, or the plugin directory

3. Code Review

What It Does: AI code review with specialized agents and confidence-based filtering for pull requests

Installs: 422,373

How To Get It: /plugin install code-review in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

4. Context7

What It Does: Upstash Context7 MCP server for live docs lookup. Pull version-specific docs and code examples from source repos into LLM context.

Installs: 406,106

How To Get It: /plugin install context7 in Claude Code, or the plugin directory

5. Skill Creator

What It Does: Create, improve, and measure skills. Use for creating, updating, evaluating, and benchmarking performance.

Installs: 367,694

How To Get It: /plugin install skill-creator in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

6. Code Simplifier

What It Does: Code clarity agent: simplifies and refines recently modified code while preserving functionality and consistency.

Installs: 336,733

How To Get It: /plugin install code-simplifier in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

7. GitHub

What It Does: Official GitHub MCP server for repo management. Create issues, manage PRs, review code, search repos, and access GitHub's API from Claude Code.

Installs: 309,067

How To Get It: /plugin install github in Claude Code, or the plugin directory

8. Playwright

What It Does: Browser automation and end-to-end testing MCP server by Microsoft. Enables Claude to interact with web pages, take screenshots, fill forms, and automate testing workflows.

Installs: 307,688

How To Get It: /plugin install playwright in Claude Code, or the plugin directory

9. CLAUDE.md Management

What It Does: Tools to maintain CLAUDE.md - audit quality, capture learnings, and keep project memory current.

Installs: 276,947

How To Get It: /plugin install claude-md-management in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

10. Feature Dev

What It Does: Feature development workflow with agents for exploration, design, and review

Installs: 249,751

How To Get It: /plugin install feature-dev in Claude Code, or the plugin directory · Anthropic verified

Rising Claude skill repos — GitHub momentum

obra/superpowers

What It Does: An agentic skills framework & software development methodology that works.

Momentum: +2,935 stars this week · 258,050 total

K-Dense-AI/claude-scientific-skills

What It Does: Turn any AI agent into an AI Scientist. The #1 Agent Skills library for science, used by 160,000+ scientists worldwide. 148 ready-to-use skills plus 100+ scientific databases cover

Momentum: +351 stars this week · 31,295 total

zarazhangrui/frontend-slides

What It Does: Create beautiful slides on the web using a coding agent's frontend skills

Momentum: +346 stars this week · 25,988 total

anthropics/claude-cookbooks

What It Does: A collection of notebooks/recipes showcasing some fun and effective ways of using Claude.

Momentum: +317 stars this week · 49,207 total

ykdojo/claude-code-tips

What It Does: 40+ tips for getting the most out of Claude Code, from basics to advanced - includes a custom status line script and Claude Code running itself in a container. Also includes the dx

Momentum: +85 stars this week · 9,366 total

ChatGPT GPT Store — official trending

1. Scholar GPT

Maker: awesomegpts.ai ✓

What It Does: Enhance research with 200M+ resources and built-in critical reading skills. Access Google Scholar, PubMed, bioRxiv, arXiv, and more, effortlessly.