Environment and dependency preflight check for new projects. Detects runtime versions, runs compatibility probe scripts, collects the full dependency tree, and returns a structured inventory for cross-component analysis. Use when the user runs /hydra:preflight or when starting work on a new or unfamiliar project.
🟢 Hydra's fastest head — ultra-fast codebase exploration, information retrieval, and codebase map building/maintenance. Use proactively whenever Claude needs to search files, read code, find patterns, grep for strings, list directories, understand project structure, answer "where is X?" questions, or build/update the…
Fast integration sweep after code changes. Checks for broken imports, missing exports, changed function signatures, missing env vars, circular dependencies, and changed API routes. Runs on the cheap tier for speed. If issues are found, the orchestrator escalates to hydra-sentinel for deep analysis. If clean — done…
Writes and reviews plugin documentation following progressive disclosure architecture, imperative voice, token budgets, and trigger-rich descriptions. Use when creating or updating plugin README, SKILL.md, WORKFLOW.md, EXAMPLES.md, TROUBLESHOOTING.md, or agent/command frontmatter descriptions.
Deep research specialist using EXA tools for comprehensive topic investigation. Use when needing to research patterns, architectures, technologies, or best practices. Manages a two-tier cache system for cross-project reuse and team knowledge sharing.
Chief of Staff & Strategic Director. Use for strategic decisions, delegating to other agents, coordinating work across projects, vision alignment, and improving AI workflows. Use proactively when planning work, making decisions, or optimizing how we work.
Codebase Explorer & Research Synthesizer. Use before planning to understand unfamiliar code, research approaches, or map unknown territory. Fast, thorough, read-only.
Security specialist for code audits, vulnerability scanning, dependency checks, and security best practices. Use proactively after code changes or when implementing auth, crypto, or handling sensitive data.
Use when designing or implementing API endpoints — server actions, tRPC procedures, REST routes for external consumers. Carries the factory's API conventions — the server actions vs tRPC decision, procedure tier stacking, per-mutation Zod schemas, central router composition with manual registration, pagination…
Use when wiring auth into a new project, switching auth providers, or adding role/org features. Carries the factory's auth conventions — the provider decision matrix (Better Auth + orgs primary, Supabase + RLS for RLS-heavy cases, Clerk for consumer/SSO), the unified requireAuth / requireRole / withOrgContext wrapper…
Use when planning or executing a destructive change against a production database — schema migrations with backfills, periodic data imports, one-shot RPCs, drop-constraint operations, anything that mutates prod tables and cannot be trivially undone. Sister agent to db-schema-architect (schemas) and…
PROACTIVELY use after code changes to review for security, performance, correctness, and maintainability. Reads diffs, analyzes patterns, reports issues by severity. Does not modify code.
Delegate for security-focused analysis: scanning for secrets, vulnerabilities, auth gaps, dependency risks, and compliance issues. Use before any deployment or when touching auth/crypto/data-handling code.
Analyze conversation patterns to detect recurring frustrations, corrections, and problematic tool usage. Feeds findings into practices/inbox/ or CLAUDEERRORS.md. Use after long sessions or when /forge insights triggers analysis.
Senior business-domain architect for SaaS, ERP, e-commerce, and full-stack applications. Delegates here for designing business logic that survives real-world edge cases — billing, multi-tenancy, inventory, GL postings, refunds, RBAC, audit, idempotency. Knows how Stripe, Linear, NetSuite, Shopify, and similar solve…
QA lead and test strategist. Delegates here for end-to-end test design, visual regression, accessibility testing, performance budgets in CI, flake hunting, and the right test pyramid for this codebase.
Senior product designer for user flows, information architecture, wireframes, microcopy, and UX review. Designs the experience before pixels. Different from design-system-architect (which handles tokens/components/theming) and impeccable (visual-fluency review) — this agent owns the user's path through the product.
Expert UI/UX design critic and advisor who provides research-backed, opinionated feedback on interfaces. Use when you need honest assessment of design decisions, want to avoid generic "AI slop" aesthetics, need evidence-based UX guidance, or want distinctive design direction grounded in actual user behavior research.…