Powershell Windows

If you've ever hit "unexpected token 'or'" in PowerShell and wondered why your perfectly reasonable if statement exploded, this is your cheat sheet. It covers the specific syntax gotchas that trip people up: why you need double parentheses around cmdlets in logical operators, why emoji will break your scripts, how to avoid null reference errors on arrays, and why ConvertTo-Json without a depth parameter will silently truncate your data. The quick reference tables are the real value here. Think of it as documentation for the parts of PowerShell that don't work the way you'd expect coming from other scripting languages.

skills.sh installs: 2.2K
GitHub stars: 43.1K
last updated: Jul 14, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add sickn33/antigravity-awesome-skills --skill powershell-windows --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

PowerShell Windows Patterns

Critical patterns and pitfalls for Windows PowerShell.

1. Operator Syntax Rules

CRITICAL: Parentheses Required

❌ Wrong	✅ Correct
`if (Test-Path "a" -or Test-Path "b")`	`if ((Test-Path "a") -or (Test-Path "b"))`
`if (Get-Item $x -and $y -eq 5)`	`if ((Get-Item $x) -and ($y -eq 5))`

Rule: Each cmdlet call MUST be in parentheses when using logical operators.

2. Encoding Compatibility

Prefer portable log markers

Purpose	❌ Don't Use	✅ Use
Success	✅ ✓	[OK] [+]
Error	❌ ✗ 🔴	[!] [X]
Warning	⚠️ 🟡	[*] [WARN]
Info	ℹ️ 🔵	[i] [INFO]
Progress	⏳	[...]

PowerShell supports Unicode. ASCII log markers are a portability choice, not a syntax requirement. For non-ASCII scripts read by Windows PowerShell 5.1, use UTF-8 with BOM; PowerShell 7 uses UTF-8 without BOM by default. Check the consuming tool before choosing file encoding.