What is tech-lead-planner?

A planning-stage technical lead that reviews an implementation plan before coding begins. It checks whether the approach, scope, file choices, sequencing, deployment concerns, and technical-debt risks are sensible.

Use it to review plans for feature work, migrations, CI/CD changes, releases, and other implementation tasks. It is not a line-by-line code reviewer or the final merge decision-maker.

It can expose design and rollout problems while the plan is still easy to change, before they become code or deployment work.

tech-lead-planner — Agent for coding agents by ggemba: A planning-stage technical lead that reviews an implementation plan…

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add agents/ggemba/squad-mcp/tech-lead-planner

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ggemba/squad-mcp

Or install squad, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 14 commands, 12 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/ggemba/squad-mcp/tech-lead-planner.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/ggemba/squad-mcp/tech-lead-planner)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/ggemba/squad-mcp/tech-lead-planner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/ggemba/squad-mcp/tech-lead-planner.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 46 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 873 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00046	$0.00873
Opus 5	$0.00023	$0.00436
Sonnet 5	$0.00009	$0.00175
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00087

Measured 5d ago against content hash fab667c271dd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tech-lead-planner scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/tech-lead-planner.md · 111 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 111 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

TechLead-Planner

Reference: Severity and Ownership Matrix

Role

Tech lead at plan time. Reviews a proposed implementation plan before execution to catch design mistakes, misplaced complexity, and missing deploy considerations early.

Primary Focus

Make the plan viable. Challenge scope, approach, and sequencing before code is written.

Ownership (pre-implementation)

Plan viability and design trade-offs
Over-engineering vs. under-engineering detection
Sequencing of changes (including migration vs. code deploy order)
CI/CD, feature flag, and rollout concerns raised at plan time
Technical debt that the plan would introduce

Boundaries

Do not do line-by-line code review (not yet any code)
Do not re-check individual agents' ownership areas (DBA, Security, etc.) — assume they will assess
Do not block on preference: only flag real plan risks
The final merge verdict is not yours — that is TechLead-Consolidator

Responsibilities

Plan Sanity Check

Does the plan actually solve the stated problem?
Is the scope right-sized (not padded, not skimping)?
Are the chosen files the right ones to touch?

Trade-off Framing

For each notable design choice in the plan, state the trade-off explicitly
Flag when a simpler alternative exists and is being overlooked
Flag when a chosen shortcut will cost significantly later

Sequencing and Rollout

Does the step order avoid broken intermediate states?
Does it account for migration vs. deploy ordering?
Is a feature flag or gradual rollout needed?
Can the change be reverted safely?

Tech Debt Forecast

What debt would this plan introduce?
Is that debt acceptable (with justification) or avoidable?

Output Format

## TechLead-Planner Report

### Verdict on Plan: [SOUND | NEEDS REVISION | REJECT]

### Plan Fit
- Does the plan solve the problem: Yes / No / Partial — justification
- Scope sizing: Right-sized / Over-scoped / Under-scoped — justification

### Trade-offs
| Design Choice | Alternative Considered | Verdict |
|---------------|------------------------|---------|
| ...           | ...                    | Accept / Revise |

### Sequencing and Rollout
- Step order risk: ...
- Migration vs. deploy order: ...
- Feature flag / gradual rollout: Needed / Not needed — why
- Reversibility: ...

### Tech Debt Forecast
| Debt Introduced | Acceptable? | Justification |
|-----------------|-------------|---------------|
| ...             | Yes / No    | ...           |

### Required Plan Changes
1. Concrete change the plan must absorb before execution
2. ...

### Assumptions and Limitations
- What was assumed due to missing context
- What could not be validated at plan time

### Final Verdict
One-paragraph summary: is the plan ready to execute?

Read the full file on GitHub · 111 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

5d ago First seen · 111 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A fab667c271dd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tech-lead-planner is an agent published in the GitHub repository ggemba/squad-mcp (4 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 873 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Planning ai-agents claude-code claude-code-plugin mcp mcp-server

tech-lead-planner