If you want the best Claude Code skills for backend work, start with this shortlist, chosen on install count, maintainer, license, audit status and fit: Supabase's Postgres best practices and supabase skills, Prisma's prisma-client-api, Neon's neon-postgres, Addy Osmani's API design and security and hardening skills, Matteo Collina's Fastify skill, Stripe best practices and Cloudflare's Workers best practices. Most are official skills from the vendor whose product they cover, so pick the ones that match your stack.
How were these skills chosen?
This is a shortlist, not a ranking. Every skill here has its own page on Kipt, where we read its SKILL.md, file list and license. On 24 October 2026 we checked each one against five criteria:
- Install count. The number on the skill's skills.sh page. skills.sh says its leaderboard "ranks skills based on anonymous telemetry data collected from the skills CLI," so this counts CLI installs only, not plugin installs or hand-copied folders.
- Maintainer. Preference for official skills from the database, framework or payments company itself, or from a named maintainer of the project.
- License. MIT or Apache 2.0, so you can read, copy and adapt the skill.
- Audit status. skills.sh shows results from Gen Agent Trust Hub, Socket and Snyk. Any Warn is reported below with the scanner's own reason. skills.sh notes it "cannot guarantee the quality or security of every skill listed," so read each skill before installing it.
- Fit. Each skill covers a distinct backend job: database, ORM, API design, framework, payments, edge runtime or security.
Install counts are labeled "(snapshot, 24 October 2026)" because they move every day.
How do the top backend skills compare?
| Skill | Good for | Maintainer | Installs (snapshot, 24 October 2026) | License | Audits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| supabase-postgres-best-practices | Any Postgres schema and queries | Supabase | 458.9K | MIT | 3 Pass |
| prisma-client-api | Prisma Client queries | Prisma | 388.6K | MIT | 3 Pass |
| supabase | Supabase projects | Supabase | 341.6K | MIT | 2 Pass, Snyk Warn |
| neon-postgres | Neon databases | Neon | 276.4K | Apache-2.0 | 3 Pass |
| workers-best-practices | Cloudflare Workers | Cloudflare | 124.3K | Apache-2.0 | 3 Pass |
| stripe-best-practices | Stripe integrations | Stripe | 97.6K | MIT | 2 Pass, Snyk Warn |
| fastify-best-practices | Fastify servers and REST APIs | Matteo Collina | 81.1K | MIT | 3 Pass |
| security-and-hardening | Input handling, auth, OWASP Top Ten | Addy Osmani | 68.9K | MIT | 3 Pass |
| api-and-interface-design | API contracts and errors | Addy Osmani | 61.5K | MIT | 3 Pass |
What does each backend skill do, and who is it for?
supabase-postgres-best-practices
A set of 31 Postgres rules the agent reads before it touches tables, indexes, migrations, RLS policies or slow queries. Its description says it is for "Postgres running anywhere," not only Supabase.
- Suits: anyone who lets an agent change a Postgres schema.
- Installs: 458.9K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: Postgres best practices skill
prisma-client-api
Prisma's official reference for Prisma Client: CRUD methods, select and include, filters, relations, transactions and safe raw SQL, so the agent stops guessing method names.
- Suits: TypeScript backends that use Prisma ORM.
- Installs: 388.6K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: Prisma skill
supabase
The official all-in-one Supabase skill: a security checklist, CLI and MCP gotchas, and a workflow for schema changes across Auth, RLS, Edge Functions and more.
- Suits: projects built on Supabase.
- Installs: 341.6K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from Gen Agent Trust Hub and Socket, Warn from Snyk. Snyk's 2 October 2026 audit gives a medium overall risk level for one finding, W011 "Third-party content exposure detected," which it scores low risk (0.10), because the workflow fetches Supabase's official docs, changelogs and security guides.
- Kipt page: Supabase skill
neon-postgres
Neon's guide for agents: when to use the pooled or direct connection string, how to test migrations on a branch, and which built-in diagnostics to run before rewriting a query.
- Suits: teams on Neon, or choosing it.
- Installs: 276.4K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: Apache-2.0. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: Neon Postgres skill
workers-best-practices
Cloudflare's official skill has the agent check current Workers docs and flag known anti-patterns, from floating promises to leaked secrets.
- Suits: developers writing or reviewing Cloudflare Workers.
- Installs: 124.3K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: Apache-2.0. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: Cloudflare Workers skill
stripe-best-practices
Stripe's guidance for agents that build or review a payment integration: which API to choose, how to handle webhooks and keys, and which deprecated patterns to avoid. The folder in stripe/ai is synced from Stripe's docs site.
- Suits: anyone letting an agent write payment code.
- Installs: 97.6K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from Gen Agent Trust Hub and Socket, Warn from Snyk. Snyk's 23 October 2026 audit gives a medium overall risk level for one finding, W012 "Unverifiable external dependency detected," which it scores high risk (0.70), because the skill points to a Metronome skill hosted on docs.stripe.com to load if it isn't already installed.
- Kipt page: Stripe skill
fastify-best-practices
Teaches Fastify the way the framework is designed: encapsulated plugins, schema-first validation and serialization, async hooks, and tests with inject(). Matteo Collina is listed as a lead maintainer in Fastify's README, though the skill lives in his personal repo, not the Fastify organization.
- Suits: Node.js developers building REST APIs on Fastify.
- Installs: 81.1K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: Fastify skill
security-and-hardening
Makes the agent threat-model first, apply a fixed set of web app defenses and check the result against a list on every change that handles input, logins, personal data or third-party calls.
- Suits: any backend that accepts untrusted data.
- Installs: 68.9K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: security and hardening skill
api-and-interface-design
Teaches contract-first interfaces, one consistent error format, validation at boundaries and idempotency keys, for REST or GraphQL endpoints and module boundaries alike.
- Suits: developers letting an agent create or change public APIs.
- Installs: 61.5K (snapshot, 24 October 2026). License: MIT. Audits: Pass from all three.
- Kipt page: API design skill
How do you install a backend skill in Claude Code?
Use the command on the skill's skills.sh page. It runs the open source skills CLI:
npx skills add https://github.com/supabase/agent-skills --skill supabase-postgres-best-practices
npx skills add https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills --skill api-and-interface-design
The CLI docs list -a claude-code to target Claude Code and -g to install to your user directory for every project. Claude Code reads personal skills from ~/.claude/skills/ and project skills from .claude/skills/, per the Claude Code skills docs. A project install lands in .claude/skills/, which you can commit so teammates get the same skills.
The same skill folders work in other agents; see Codex skills and Cursor skills.
Which backend skills should you combine?
Start with the layer you touch most, then add one general skill:
- Postgres on Supabase: supabase plus supabase-postgres-best-practices. They come from the same repo and split the work between platform and database.
- Postgres on Neon with Prisma: neon-postgres for connections and migrations, prisma-client-api for queries.
- Node.js API: fastify-best-practices for the framework, api-and-interface-design for contracts and errors.
- Anything public: add security-and-hardening, and stripe-best-practices if you take payments.
Skills and MCP servers solve different problems: a skill teaches the agent how to work, while an MCP server gives it tools to act. See skills vs MCP for when to use each.
Are audit warnings a reason to skip a backend skill?
Not by themselves. Both Warns on this list come from Snyk and concern content fetched from the vendor's own domain at runtime, which a scanner cannot verify in advance. The practical step is the same for every skill: read the SKILL.md and any scripts, check what URLs it fetches, and install it in a project before you trust it globally. The prompt injection guide covers why content an agent reads at runtime matters.
Where should you keep the backend skills you choose?
Kipt keeps your prompts and Agent Skills as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own. You can import a skill from a GitHub link, a folder or a .zip, edit it to match your conventions, and install the whole library into Claude Code or Codex with npx skills add https://github.com/<you>/<repo>.git --all -g. Every skill on this list uses MIT or Apache 2.0; keep the license file when you copy one.
For more options, see the best Claude Code skills overview and the companion lists of frontend skills and testing skills.