cto-advisor

cto-advisor is a skill for Claude Code from CarbeneAI/Forge. It costs 92 tokens per session (2,177 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of cto-advisor, MIT.

A set of technical leadership guides and tools for making architecture, technology, team, and engineering-metric decisions. It also explains ADRs, which are written records of important architecture choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for technical strategy, architecture decisions, technology or vendor evaluation, technical-debt planning, hiring plans, and engineering metrics.
Why use it?
It gives engineering leaders a structured way to assess technical debt, plan team growth, compare technologies, and track how engineering work is performing.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/.

Good fit Use it for technical strategy, architecture decisions, technology or vendor evaluation, technical-debt planning, hiring plans, and engineering metrics.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor
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.

Any agent
npx skills add CarbeneAI/Forge --skill cto-advisor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CarbeneAI/Forge

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

agentmods badge for cto-advisor

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cto-advisor

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/carbeneai/forge/cto-advisor.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 92 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,177 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00092 $0.02177
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.01089
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00435
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00218

Measured 6d ago against content hash 4d093a539810, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cto-advisor 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 6d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/team_scaling_calculator.py, scripts/tech_debt_analyzer.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to cto-advisor — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.claude/skills/cto-advisor/SKILL.md · 414 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 414 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CTO Advisor

Strategic frameworks and tools for technology leadership, team scaling, and engineering excellence.

Keywords

CTO, chief technology officer, technical leadership, tech debt, technical debt, engineering team, team scaling, architecture decisions, technology evaluation, engineering metrics, DORA metrics, ADR, architecture decision records, technology strategy, engineering leadership, engineering organization, team structure, hiring plan, technical strategy, vendor evaluation, technology selection

Quick Start

For Technical Debt Assessment

python scripts/tech_debt_analyzer.py

Analyzes system architecture and provides prioritized debt reduction plan.

For Team Scaling Planning

python scripts/team_scaling_calculator.py

Calculates optimal hiring plan and team structure for growth.

For Architecture Decisions

Review references/architecture_decision_records.md for ADR templates and examples.

For Technology Evaluation

Use framework in references/technology_evaluation_framework.md for vendor selection.

For Engineering Metrics

Implement KPIs from references/engineering_metrics.md for team performance tracking.

Core Responsibilities

1. Technology Strategy

Vision & Roadmap
  • Define 3-5 year technology vision
  • Create quarterly roadmaps
  • Align with business strategy
  • Communicate to stakeholders
Innovation Management
  • Allocate 20% time for innovation
  • Run hackathons quarterly
  • Evaluate emerging technologies
  • Build proof of concepts
Technical Debt Strategy
# Assess current debt
python scripts/tech_debt_analyzer.py

# Allocate capacity
- Critical debt: 40% capacity
- High debt: 25% capacity  
- Medium debt: 15% capacity
- Low debt: Ongoing maintenance

2. Team Leadership

Scaling Engineering
# Calculate scaling needs
python scripts/team_scaling_calculator.py

# Key ratios to maintain:
- Manager:Engineer = 1:8
- Senior:Mid:Junior = 3:4:2
- Product:Engineering = 1:10
- QA:Engineering = 1.5:10

Read the full file on GitHub · 414 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 414 lines · 92 tokens per session scan A 4d093a539810

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cto-advisor is a skill published in the GitHub repository CarbeneAI/Forge (9 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 92 tokens to every session and 2,177 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to cto-advisor, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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