Cto Advisor
When to use
Use this skill for Cto leadership decisions when you need to make a technology leadership decision. The expected result is a technology decision record with architecture trade-offs, owner, and rollout gate.
Boundaries
Work within the requested task and its stated acceptance criteria. Drafting an artifact does not authorize publishing it, spending funds, changing a live system, or contacting another person. Identify any such action separately before taking it.
Inputs
Inspect architecture, reliability, security, delivery capacity, technical debt, and product commitments. Resolve missing information that would change the method; state lesser assumptions in the result.
Method
- Diagnose. Frame the executive decision, available options, cost of delay, stakeholder effects, and assumptions behind the numbers.
- Decide. Compare build, buy, and defer options against risk, cost, operability, and migration effort.
- Produce. Build a technology decision record with architecture trade-offs, owner, and rollout gate from the inspected material; keep assumptions distinguishable from observed facts.
Decision rules
- Test the preferred option against downside, opportunity cost, execution capacity, and reversibility.
- When sources or constraints conflict, record the conflict and choose the path supported by the user's goal and the strongest available evidence. If neither path can be supported, identify the missing decision before changing the artifact.
Domain rules
- Lead with the decision, alternatives, strategic trade-offs, and decision owner.
- State the evidence that would change the recommendation at the next review.
Verification
Check the recommendation against a concrete failure mode and delivery dependency. Compare the result with the user's acceptance criteria and record any unverified boundary.
Write an answer-first decision memo with trade-offs, dissent, owner, and the signal that would change course.
Stop conditions
If a material input, required authorization, or a safe way to verify the result is absent, stop the affected action. Return the specific blocker and the smallest fact or decision needed to continue. Do not report an unrun check as passed.
Output
Provide a technology decision record with architecture trade-offs, owner, and rollout gate. Include the decisive evidence and actual verification result. Name any artifact location and unresolved issue that affects its use.