great_cto 🤖 Agent Free

What it does

great_cto is an orchestration layer on top of Claude Code that turns a single prompt into a full staged product-development pipeline, run by 70 specialist agents rather than one generalist session. An independent model reviews each stage before the next one builds on it, and three decisions are deliberately kept in human hands: what gets built, how it gets built, and whether to deploy.

What is inside

The pipeline moves through problem framing and a written brief, a human checkpoint to approve requirements, an architecture and design phase, a second human checkpoint to approve the approach, implementation (scaffold, backend, frontend, tests, review, security), a third checkpoint to approve deployment, and finally live deployment. Each stage carries its own verification gate and cost tracking, and spending caps refuse further spend outright rather than just warning. Slash commands (/save, /resume, /review, /spec, /poc, /release, /trace) let you checkpoint, resume, and audit a run in progress.

Works with

Claude Code is the primary target; Codex is supported through a controlled host runtime. Requires Node.js 18.17 or later.

How to install or connect

npx great-cto init

Then, inside Claude Code:

/start "describe your product"

Maintenance and safety

MIT licensed with notably active development (1,600+ commits), 102 stars, and 5 open issues at last check. The human-approval checkpoints before implementation and before deployment are a meaningful safety feature for an agent pipeline that otherwise runs with significant autonomy.

Who should use it

Solo developers or small teams who want Claude Code to drive an entire build from spec to deployed URL, but with explicit approval gates and cost controls rather than letting dozens of agents run unsupervised.