CTO checklist
A practical checklist for CTOs and engineering leaders adopting Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenHands, or similar tools.
Check the engineering system, not only the tool license.
Checklist
These controls help teams move from informal tool usage to repo-specific adoption discipline.
Agents need repository-specific rules: architecture, test commands, coding style, forbidden areas, dependency rules, and review expectations. Examples include AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursor/rules, and Codex instruction files.
Every agent workflow should know the exact lint, typecheck, unit test, integration test, and build commands expected before proposing changes.
Some files or flows should require explicit human approval: authentication, billing, cryptography, secrets, production infrastructure, migrations, compliance-sensitive code, and security-critical paths.
Developers need clear rules on secrets, tokens, logs, environment files, screenshots, prompts, and external model usage.
AI tools should not casually add libraries, upgrade frameworks, or change lock files without review.
AI-generated or AI-assisted changes still need ownership, explanation, tests, risk notes, and reviewer accountability.
Every AI-assisted PR should be checked for correctness, unnecessary complexity, duplicated logic, hallucinated APIs, error handling, performance, and security risk.
Code scanning, dependency scanning, secret scanning, and security-sensitive diffs should be part of the workflow.
Teams need a growing regression suite so AI changes can be accepted quickly without lowering quality.
Measure cycle time, review time, test failures, revert rate, defect leakage, PR size, tool cost, and developer experience. Avoid fake productivity claims.
If your team is already using Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenHands, or similar tools, SNS can review your current workflow against these controls and identify the highest-risk gaps.