Skills

RailsCTO is built from 16 specialized skills that attach to Claude Code and run automatically based on what files your agent touches. Each skill has a narrow focus, a clear trigger, and a single job.

Engineering

Skills that shape how Rails code gets written.

Skill	What it does
rails-cto	Orchestrator — loads core context, routes work to specialized skills, enforces mandatory QA gates
rails-cto-engineer	Core Rails philosophy — 37signals patterns, One Person Framework, code simplification
rails-cto-api	RESTful JSON APIs under Api:: namespace, OpenAPI 3.x conventions
rails-cto-restful	Thin controllers, 7 standard REST actions, nested resources over custom routes
rails-cto-erb	ERB template formatting, attribute alignment, scannable view files
rails-cto-stimulus	Stimulus controllers, Turbo integration, reuse-first philosophy
rails-cto-tailwind	Tailwind CSS conventions, dark mode, responsive, design system
rails-cto-view-component	ViewComponent patterns with Hotwire, Lookbook previews
rails-cto-minitest	Minitest::Spec DSL, parallel tests, SimpleCov coverage thresholds

Quality

Skills that act as mandatory gates on every change.

Skill	What it does
rails-cto-qa	The main quality gate — linting, tests, and code review on every .rb change
rails-cto-static-analysis	Reek, Flog, Flay — code smells, complexity, duplication; auto-refactors when issues are found
rails-cto-security	Brakeman and bundler-audit — code-level vulnerabilities and CVE scanning

Git Workflow

Skills for shipping code safely.

Skill	What it does
rails-cto-commit	Stage and commit with a human-friendly message; optional push
rails-cto-pull-request	Create a PR from the current branch into staging
rails-cto-production-pr	Merge staging into main for a production release

Other

Skill	What it does
rails-cto-upgrade	Analyze Rails upgrade paths, fetch upgrade notes, perform selective merges

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How they fit together

When you start a Claude Code session in a Rails project, the orchestrator (rails-cto) loads first. It pulls in the core engineering context (rails-cto-engineer) and then watches for file changes and user intent. As soon as something happens that matches a specialized skill's trigger, that skill activates.

Three routes are mandatory and cannot be skipped:

• Any .rb change → rails-cto-qa must run before the task is considered done.
• Any .html.erb change → rails-cto-erb + rails-cto-tailwind must run.
• Any implementation plan → must include rails-cto-qa as the final step.

See Skill Routing for the full routing table.