I had a tech-lead skill for Claude Code that asked questions before coding. Worked great. But I was still the one managing everything around it - remembering context between sessions, deciding which agents to spawn, keeping scope in check.
So I built a full project manager skill. Four phases: Discovery, Plan, Execute, Review. It won't skip ahead. The most important thing it does is tell me no.
Pointed it at my auth system and asked "could you show this to Torvalds?" It spawned three specialist agents, came back with a B-minus grade and 12 findings including a hardcoded signing key and cron secrets in query params.
Best part: scope management. When I try to add features mid-project, it calculates the scope increase and tells me the actual cost. "That's 40% more work. Current feature ships two phases later. Still want it?" Nine times out of ten, the answer is no.
Blog post with full writeup and downloadable skill file: [link]
"Nobody on your team has production Rust experience. Your team is you."
The PM chose violence and I respect it.
In fairness, it only says that in devil's advocate mode. In normal mode it would have phrased it more diplomatically.
Still hurts though.
This is literally what every team lead wishes they could do to junior devs. "That's a 40% scope increase" is the kind of sentence I've wanted to say in every sprint planning since 2019.
Bold of you to assume juniors are the only ones who scope creep. I'm a staff engineer and I still do it. I just call it "technical exploration" so nobody questions it.
I'm an actual PM and I'm not sure if I should be offended or impressed. The "bad PMs manage by spreadsheet, good PMs clear the path" distinction is painfully accurate. I've been both at different points in my career.
Also, quantified scope thresholds? I'm stealing that for my next retro.
Honestly the thresholds are the thing I'm most proud of. Turns out "vibes-based scope management" doesn't scale, even when the team is one person.
So you built an AI to manage AI agents that write code for you. At what point do you just go to the beach and let the robots handle everything?
I still write the blueprints, make the architectural decisions, and review everything. The PM manages process, not product. If I went to the beach it would just sit there asking uncomfortable questions to an empty terminal.
"asking uncomfortable questions to an empty terminal" is the name of my memoir
B-minus is generous. Hardcoded signing key + cron secrets in query params? Linus wouldn't grade you. He'd write a 4-paragraph email that gets screenshotted and posted to this subreddit with the title "Torvalds destroys yet another developer's will to live"
Wait, he says he's never been a professional developer? 15 years fixing hardware and managing SLAs? And he built a multi-agent orchestration system with persistent memory and quantified scope management?
I have a CS degree and my side projects are all half-finished todo apps.
Honestly the people who build the most useful tools are always the ones who actually needed them. CS grads build abstractions. People who've fixed 10,000 printers build things that work.
The sprint planning output is unironically better than what my actual PM produces. And my PM is a human being with a PMP certification and a whiteboard addiction.
"I built this because I'm a terrible manager of myself" is the most honest thing I've read on this subreddit in months. Most posts here are thinly veiled self-promotion dressed up as humility. This one is just... actually humble.
Sir this is a Wendy's
So the evolution is:
1. AI writes code without asking
2. Build tech lead to make AI ask questions
3. Still managing everything yourself
4. Build PM to manage the tech lead
5. ???
6. Build an AI CEO to manage the PM
I actually have a CPO skill. So... yes. Basically.