rails-cto

The orchestrator. The first skill loaded in every session and the traffic cop for the entire plugin.

What it does

rails-cto is the entry point for the plugin. When it loads at the start of a Rails session, it:

1. Invokes rails-cto-engineer to pull in core Rails philosophy, 37signals patterns, and the One Person Framework context.
2. Reads the descriptions of every other skill in the plugin to build a routing map.
3. Watches the session for signals — file changes, user keywords, commands — and automatically invokes the right specialized skill when something matches.
4. Enforces the mandatory quality gates after Ruby and ERB changes.
5. Runs the completion checklist before a task is considered done.

Think of it as a senior engineer sitting next to your agent, routing every piece of work to the right specialist and refusing to ship anything that hasn't passed review.

When it triggers

At the start of every Rails session. The CLAUDE.md block that rails-cto init installs instructs the agent to invoke /rails-cto before doing anything else. Everything flows through it from there.

Example

You: Add a new endpoint to the bookmarks API that returns the last 10
     bookmarks for a user.

Agent: [invokes /rails-cto at session start]
       [routes to /rails-cto-api for API conventions]
       [routes to /rails-cto-restful for controller design]
       [writes the code]
       [invokes /rails-cto-qa after the .rb change]
       [invokes /rails-cto-static-analysis and /rails-cto-security
        as part of the gate]
       [reports back only after every gate passes]

You didn't have to mention any of those skills. The orchestrator routed the work for you.

View source

skills/rails-cto/SKILL.md on GitHub →