AI-augmented people and technical leadership workflows for the messy jump from senior engineer to tech lead.
This is a practical toolkit for first-time tech leads: templates, review loops, and agent instructions that help you lead people through technical work - code review, delivery risk, technical decisions, stakeholder updates, coaching conversations, and team follow-ups.
This is not a prompt pack.
It is an operating system for the transition from "strong senior engineer" to "trusted technical leader".
Status: early public draft. Free workflows are being added first; paid materials will be released separately.
The first free workflow helps you turn rough weekly notes into people follow-ups, delivery and technical risks, stakeholder updates, open decisions, manager 1:1 topics, coaching moments, and next-week priorities.
- Senior engineers recently promoted to tech lead
- Tech leads in product teams without much formal leadership support
- Engineers using AI tools who want better leadership workflows, not just faster code
- Engineering managers looking for lightweight enablement materials for new tech leads
Try the free Weekly Review Lite workflow:
- Open
free/weekly-review-lite.md - Paste the agent instructions into Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, or another AI assistant
- Add your rough notes from the week
- Compare with the example:
Privacy note: Do not paste confidential company, customer, employee, security, or production data into third-party AI tools. Sanitize your notes first.
Available now:
Coming soon:
- Stakeholder Translator Lite
- ADR Reviewer Lite
- Coaching Prep Lite
- Claude / ChatGPT / Codex adapters
If you try Weekly Review Lite, please open an issue with what felt useful, generic, missing, or unrealistic in your real week.
Most AI coding workflows help you write, review, or ship code faster.
This project focuses on the part of technical leadership that happens around the code:
- giving useful feedback
- making risk visible before it turns into blame
- preparing for difficult conversations
- translating technical concerns into stakeholder language
- deciding when to coach, when to pair, and when to escalate
- building trust while still holding the quality bar
The workflows are designed to help you think like a tech lead, not just produce more output.
Most first-time tech leads are promoted because they are technically strong.
Then the job changes.
The hard part is not just making better technical decisions. It is learning how to lead people through technical uncertainty.
Suddenly you are expected to:
- review code in a way that improves quality without demoralising people
- coach engineers without becoming their manager
- spot delivery risk before it turns into blame
- explain technical trade-offs in language stakeholders can act on
- help quiet engineers surface concerns earlier
- challenge defensive senior engineers without turning every disagreement into a power struggle
- make decisions when ownership, authority, and information are all imperfect
The goal of this project is to make those leadership loops explicit, reusable, and AI-assisted.
AI should not replace your judgement or your relationships.
It should help you prepare, reflect, communicate clearly, and notice the human dynamics you might otherwise miss.
The free materials in this repository are licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Paid Tech Lead Survival Kit materials are distributed separately under a commercial license and are not covered by this repository license.
See paid/README.md for details.
If you are a first-time tech lead or manage first-time tech leads, feedback is very welcome. Open an issue with what would make this more useful in your real week.