great_cto

Ship products with the coding agent you already have.

npx great-cto init

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Your coding agent ships code. This is what checks it.

Describe a product or a feature. 72 agents with narrow jobs take it through brief, architecture, build, review and security; a second model from another family reads the same diff. Three decisions stay yours — what gets built, how, and whether it ships — and what lands is a repository you own and a URL that works. You pay your own LLM provider; great_cto is MIT and bills nothing.

Quick start

npx great-cto init

Restart Claude Code. Day to day there are three things:

	In Claude Code	In the terminal
Start work	/start "add Google login"	great-cto run "add Google login"
See what needs you	/inbox	great-cto status
Continue	/resume	great-cto resume

/start takes a new product or a task in an existing project and picks the workflow itself. /resume continues only what you already approved; a pending decision still waits for you. Everything else — /review, /spec, /save, /digest and the rest — is there when you need it: all commands.

The board at localhost:3141 opens on Work — your tasks, the decisions waiting on you, and what already shipped. Cost, agents and reviewers are under Tools. Nothing on it renders an absence as a pass: a check that could not decide reads unverifiable, a cost nobody measured unmeasured, a reviewer that could not run unavailable.

On OpenAI Codex

npx great-cto init --host codex gives Codex the skills, the MCP server and six safety guards as plugin hooks (approve them once: run codex in a terminal and choose Trust all and continue). Codex has no native plugin surface for slash commands or role agents, so the pipeline runs through the CLI instead:

great-cto run "add Google login" --host codex --allow src,tests,docs
great-cto status --host codex
great-cto resume --host codex

Codex never updates the plugin by itself — great-cto upgrade does. Details, mixed Claude + Codex runs and Codex as the second reviewer: Codex host guide.

When it stops you

One line in .great_cto/PROJECT.md:

approval-level	Stops you at	Stops
ship-only	the deploy — and briefs you on what gets built	1
product-only	what we build · whether it ships	2
gates-only (default)	what we build · the design · the deploy	3
strict	the design · code review · the deploy	3
auto	nothing in the pipeline	0

Regulated products — fintech, healthcare, gov — keep their security, compliance and ship gates at every level. How the gates work.

Numbers, measured

One feature, end to end, fully traced	1h 26m · $3.40 in tokens — the receipts
A whole product — 7 built in the open benchmark	median $171 in tokens · 70/100 quality, measured 2026-07-10 — reproduce it
Typical month, 20 pipeline runs	~$34 — you pay your own LLM provider, nothing else

Limitations

For one builder, not a team; not a hosted app builder — it needs your coding agent; not a CI/CD system; compliance scaffolds are starting points, not certifications; LLM output is not deterministic. The honest version of each, and what it refuses to claim: docs/DETAILS.md.

Learn more

Docs · Getting started · Commands · Gates · Agents · FAQ · Everything else · Issues · Security · Contributing · Privacy — telemetry is off by default

MIT — LICENSE. Built by @avelikiy. If it saved you time, a star helps other solo builders find it.