AGENTS.md

Guidelines for AI agents working in this repository.

Repository Overview

This repository contains Agent Skills for engineering managers, following the Agent Skills specification. Skills install to .agents/skills/ (the cross-agent standard).

• Name: Engineering Management Skills
• License: MIT

Repository Structure

engineeringmanagementskills/
├── skills/                # Agent Skills
│   └── skill-name/
│       ├── SKILL.md       # Required skill file
│       └── references/    # Optional supporting docs
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── AGENTS.md
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Skill File Requirements

Every SKILL.md must have valid YAML frontmatter:

---
name: skill-name
description: When to use this skill. Include trigger phrases.
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
---

Rules:

• name must match directory name exactly
• name is 1-64 chars, lowercase alphanumeric + hyphens only
• description is 1-1024 characters
• Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines; move reference material to references/

Foundation Skill

em-context is the foundation. All other skills should instruct the agent to read .agents/em-context.md (or .agents/skills/em-context/SKILL.md) before proceeding, so they have team and org context.

Engineering Management Skills

An OPINIONATED library of Agent Skills for engineering managers, tech leads, and directors.

LLMs were trained on the whole internet, and they suck at advice related to management.

This repo is based on the best articles I've read in the last 10 years, engineering management and leadership books, my course, and my own articles and posts based on my own experience. No link to the course here, so nobody can blame me for promotion. For the books, I used only my own notes. I did not upload the full books to LLMs.

You may strongly disagree with an answer. That's good, and that's the point. Generic shit advice is not helpful. If you disagree, follow your own opinion.

My goal is to provide some useful perspective, like you had talked to a fellow EM and shared your dilemma.

The opinions are mine. They are not universal truth, and this is not a how-to guide.

I encourage you to stress these skills. Dive deep. Ask for ideas, suggestions, alternatives, and pushback. The point is not to get a perfect answer on the first try, but to use the skill as a thinking partner for a real management situation.

I also included a database of 100 practical ideas for improving your team and supporting your engineers, so the skills can suggest concrete actions instead of staying at the level of abstract advice.

The skills are heavily based on articles from my blog and newsletter, newsletter.manager.dev. See the Resources section for the full list of articles and books that inspired this repo, including resources that did not end up being used directly in a skill.

What This Repository Is

These skills help AI agents give sharper management support for 1:1s, feedback, hiring, performance, roadmap tradeoffs, team health, delegation, stakeholder communication, and related engineering leadership work.

The repository follows the Agent Skills specification. Each skill lives in skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md and may include focused supporting material under references/.

How The Skills Work

em-context is the foundation skill. It stores team, org, manager, and direct-report context. Other skills should read that context first when it exists, and update it automatically when a conversation reveals durable new information, so advice can stay grounded in the user's actual team.

Each management skill is designed to:

• Trigger from realistic manager prompts, not only exact skill names
• Ask only for missing context that materially changes the advice
• Give concise, direct, manager-ready guidance by default
• Provide scripts, next steps, tradeoffs, and risks where useful
• Preserve a clear point of view instead of flattening everything into generic advice
• Link to source material in references/sources.md

Skills By Management Area

The skills/ directory stays flat so skills are easy to install and publish. This grouping is only here to make the library easier to browse.

Foundation

Skill	Purpose
em-context	Stores team/org context and direct-report profiles used by the other skills, and acts as shared memory across conversations

Managing People

Individual humans: growth, feedback, motivation, performance, retention, hiring, and direct manager/report conversations.

Skill	Purpose
1on1s	Prepare, run, improve, and follow up on 1:1s
career-development	Support career growth, promotion readiness, and career conversations
engineer-motivation	Diagnose what drives engineers and match work to motivation
feedback	Give specific positive or corrective feedback and ask for feedback upward
hiring	Define roles, structure interviews, calibrate hiring, and evaluate new hires
managing-high-performers	Manage top engineers, brilliant jerks, boredom, ambition, and burnout risk
performance-reviews	Diagnose underperformance, write reviews, and decide on PIPs or exits
retaining-developers	Diagnose attrition risk and prepare retention conversations

Building The Team

The team as a system: ownership, trust, rituals, staffing shape, knowledge flow, and sensitive team-level situations.

Skill	Purpose
delegation	Move managers out of the bottleneck role and build ownership
difficult-situations	Handle high-stakes management edge cases and sensitive situations
knowledge-sharing	Break knowledge silos and improve documentation/onboarding flow
meetings	Decide whether to meet, run better meetings, and protect engineering focus time
team-composition	Diagnose team capability gaps and hiring/assignment needs
team-health	Assess and improve morale, trust, intensity, engagement, and team culture

Delivery And Execution

Getting work through the system: prioritization, deadlines, productivity, hidden work, delivery tradeoffs, and capacity.

Skill	Purpose
developer-productivity	Measure team productivity without harmful individual scoring
managing-urgency	Handle deadlines, fake urgency, crisis pressure, and tradeoff conversations
roadmap-planning	Plan roadmaps, prioritize tech work, and communicate tradeoffs
shadow-work	Identify hidden capacity drains like support, glue work, and shadow backlogs

Product, Business, And Stakeholders

Operating outside the team boundary: PM partnership, business framing, stakeholder trust, upward communication, architecture collaboration, and written alignment.

Skill	Purpose
business-literacy	Translate engineering work into business and finance language
influence	Persuade stakeholders and get buy-in without direct authority
managing-up	Build a reliable relationship with your manager and communicate upward
working-with-architects	Work effectively with architects, staff engineers, and principal engineers
working-with-pm	Build a stronger PM-EM partnership and improve product orientation
written-communication	Draft clear Slack messages, announcements, and stakeholder updates

Managing Yourself

Your own operating system as a manager: role transitions, personal traps, bad-day patterns, and recurring leadership tensions.

Skill	Purpose
management-transitions	Navigate new-manager, inherited-team, peer-to-manager, and acquisition transitions
managing-yourself	Diagnose personal EM traps, bad-day patterns, and recurring leadership tensions

Installation

Use the Skills CLI in the project where you want to install the skills:

npx skills init
npx skills add manager-dot-dev/manager-skills

You can also install a specific skill from the repo:

npx skills add manager-dot-dev/manager-skills/skills/1on1s

Then create or update .agents/em-context.md with your team context so the other skills can tailor their advice.

Repository Structure

skills/
  skill-name/
    SKILL.md
    references/
      sources.md

Resources

The skills are heavily based on articles from newsletter.manager.dev, plus the articles and books below. This list includes sources that inspired the repo even when they did not end up directly referenced in a specific skill.

Articles

#	Title	URL
1	10 Interview Techniques From the World's Best Interviewers	https://www.readtheprofile.com/p/the-profile-10-interview-techniques
2	1:1 as a manager of managers	https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-the-disaster/
3	12 signs you are working in a feature factory	https://cutle.fish/blog/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory
4	5 Engineering Manager Archetypes	https://www.patkua.com/blog/5-engineering-manager-archetypes/
5	A company is not a family - it's a team	https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-re-not-guaranteed-a-spot-on-the-team-95080248
6	Advice for new directors	https://www.rubick.com/advice-for-new-directors/
7	Agile is Dead! The Endless Debate!	https://dpereira.substack.com/p/agile-is-dead-true-or-false
8	All Projects Are Business Projects	https://staysaasy.com/management/2023/10/08/all-projects-are-business-projects.html
9	Ambition gravity	https://www.developing.dev/p/ambition-gravity
10	Answer to 'no estimations'	https://lucasfcosta.com/2023/07/15/people-who-cant-estimate.html
11	Article - Reliable teams	https://staysaasy.com/management/2022/09/17/Reliable-Teams.html
12	Best interview questions by Lenny	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-best-interview-questions
13	Bottlenecks and the theory of constraints	https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/theory-of-constraints/
14	Brian Chesky on how to hire	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-chesky-on-hiring
15	Brook's Law - adding more people can make software later	https://newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/brooks-law
16	Commandos, Infantry, and Police	https://cdixon.org/2010/02/18/the-three-phases-of-business-growth
17	CTO vs VPE / VP R&D	https://www.gitprime.com/the-cto-vs-vp-engineering-debate/
18	Data Dog downtime incident	https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/2023-03-08-postmortem/
19	Dealing with feature factory	https://www.svpg.com/dealing-with-feature-teams/
20	Developer Experience management	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/developer-experience
21	Developer productivity - Advocating for qualitative metrics	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/developer-productivity
22	Developer progression	https://www.progression.fyi/
23	DevEx - measuring developer productivity	https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3595878
24	Disagree and commit just doesn't work	https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/disagree-and-commit
25	DMO Framework - Developer Motivation Explained	https://www.developing.dev/p/dmo-framework
26	DX Core 4 - Developer Productivity Metrics	https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-with-the-dx-core-4/
27	Elite vs Average performers	https://www.developing.dev/p/elite-vs-average-performers
28	Embracing negativity and the Abilene paradox	https://www.rubick.com/embracing-negativity/
29	Engineering excellence	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/engineering-excellence
30	Engineering Metrics Explained	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/engineering-metrics
31	Fail fast, fail cheap, fail forward	https://www.svpg.com/fail-fast/
32	Feature Flags - Engineering practices	https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
33	Fixing broken teams - don't blame the previous leader	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/p/fix-your-broken-team-8-turnaround-tips-for-sustained-success
34	Gamifying feedback	https://www.bitsandbrushes.news/p/how-to-boost-remote-speed-feedback
35	Getting an Engineering Executive Job	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/getting-an-engineering-executive
36	Good Managers Clear Paths	https://leadership.garden/
37	Good product teams	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4PdUItyXUk
38	Google - The five keys to a successful team	https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
39	Handling layoffs	https://kellanem.com/notes/layoff-foundations
40	Hands-On	https://open.substack.com/pub/chaitimewithchaitali/p/hands-on
41	Have Concerns And Commit	https://blog.staysaasy.com/p/have-concerns-and-commit
42	Hiring - culture contribution instead of culture fit	https://kevanlee.substack.com/p/513-how-what-vs-do-is
43	Hiring A Players	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/p/the-talent-factory-how-to-identify-and-develop-a-players-for-your-team
44	Hiring for Additivity	https://medium.com/@aaronlerch/hiring-for-additivity-548d58016cc7
45	How Can You Help Your Team Avoid Layoffs	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/p/how-can-you-help-your-team-avoid-layoffs
46	How Engineering Management is Changing in 2024	https://refactoring.fm/p/how-engineering-management-is-changing
47	How I stay motivated as an engineering manager	https://open.substack.com/pub/becomingaleader/p/how-i-stay-motivated-as-an-engineering
48	How To Build The Leadership Habits That Lead To Great Teams	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-build-the-leadership-habits-that-lead-to-great-teams
49	How much appreciation do you show your team	https://open.substack.com/pub/thecaringtechie/p/how-much-appreciation-do-you-show
50	How to Become More Likable	https://open.substack.com/pub/theprofile/p/how-to-become-more-likable-charismatic
51	How to Become a Master Negotiator	https://open.substack.com/pub/theprofile/p/negotiation-techniques
52	How to Design an Org for Founder Mode	https://open.substack.com/pub/danhock/p/designing-an-org-for-founder-mode
53	How to Self-Manage Even if You Have a Manager	https://open.substack.com/pub/thecaringtechie/p/how-to-self-manage-even-if-you-have
54	How to Ship Fast	https://wraptext.equals.com/how-to-ship-fast/
55	How big companies do project management	https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big-tech/
56	How to create a culture of dogfooding	https://nickey.substack.com/p/how-to-create-a-culture-of-dogfooding
57	How to get more headcount	https://lethain.com/how-to-get-more-headcount/
58	How to on-board yourself when you join a new team	https://open.substack.com/pub/weskao/p/how-to-on-board-yourself
59	How to operate (barrels and ammunition)	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fQHLK1aIBs
60	How to prioritize features	https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8p-how-to-prioritize-features
61	How to properly estimate a project	https://hybridhacker.email/p/demystifying-project-estimation
62	How to run better meetings	https://open.substack.com/pub/torstenwalbaum/p/how-to-run-better-meetings
63	Ice breaker questions	https://dariarudnik.com/tpost/spnhl05sk1-breaking-the-virtual-ice-100-questions-f
64	In a Job Interview, Acknowledge Your Weaknesses	https://adamgrant.substack.com/p/in-a-job-interview-this-is-how-to
65	Judge Your Coworkers	https://open.substack.com/pub/staysaasy/p/judge-your-coworkers
66	Kebab vs Cake organization	https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/kebab-vs-cake
67	Layers of context	https://lethain.com/layers-of-context/
68	Lessons from Netflix CTO	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-netflix-builds-a-culture-of-excellence
69	Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule	https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
70	Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey	https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey
71	Manager / Leader / Mentor	https://enginuity.substack.com/
72	Managing Expectations	https://markasmithjr.substack.com/p/practical-to-powerful-great-expectations
73	Managing High Performers	https://blog.staysaasy.com/p/managing-high-performers
74	Managing Up	https://review.firstround.com/a-tactical-guide-to-managing-up-30-tips-from-the-smartest-people-we-know
75	Managing Urgency	https://oded.substack.com/p/note-to-future-self-beware-of-fake
76	Managing up - shit rolls downhill	https://www.leahtharin.com/p/the-skill-that-gets-you-fired-or
77	Managing up: 11 ways to get better feedback	https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/get-better-feedback
78	Micromanagement balance	https://shamun.dev/posts/micromanagement
79	Mistakes you shouldn't let your reports make	https://bjorg.bjornroche.com/management/mistakes-should-not-let-make/
80	On Estimates - Shay Yallin Blog	https://www.shaiyallin.com/post/someestimates
81	On multi dimensional tradeoffs	https://lethain.com/multi-dimensional-tradeoffs/
82	Onboarding for technical leadership roles	https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=1002265&post_id=142445063
83	One on One Meeting Format Ideas	https://marcgg.com/
84	Organizing a Hackathon	https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/hackathons
85	Performance management the rising tide	https://theengineeringmanager.substack.com/p/performance-management-the-rising
86	Performance of engineering teams	https://blog.malt.engineering/should-we-measure-the-performance-of-an-engineering-team-e461ccff1cd4
87	Polarity Management	https://www.chaitime.chaitalinarla.com/p/equilibrium
88	Practices to reduce meetings	https://medium.com/illumination/back-to-back-meetings-create-an-illusion-of-productivity-why-the-best-leaders-keep-an-empty-adbb02abdc0f
89	Prioritization vs Filtering	https://betterprogramming.pub/you-will-always-have-more-problems-than-engineers-aafff94a4623
90	Reframing technical debt	https://www.engineeringleadership.xyz/p/reframing-technical-debt
91	Retention techniques - Elena Verna	https://www.elenaverna.com/p/how-to-improve-your-voluntary-churn
92	Stop with the compliment sandwich	https://adamgrant.substack.com/p/stop-serving-the-compliment-sandwich
93	Team building - dream team workshop by Miro	https://miro.com/miroverse/dream-team-workshop/
94	Ten Types of Software Engineering Waste	https://www.practicalengineering.management/p/ten-types-of-software-engineering
95	The 5 Questions to Unlock Poor Performers	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/
96	The 6 Mistakes You're Going to Make as a New Manager	https://terriblesoftware.org/2024/12/04/the-6-mistakes-youre-going-to-make-as-a-new-manager/
97	The Management Skill Nobody Talks About - repair	https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/08/22/the-management-skill-nobody-talks-about/
98	The Tarzan Method for career development	https://open.substack.com/pub/theengineeringmanager/p/the-tarzan-method
99	The lifecycles of engineering teams	https://betterprogramming.pub/10-ideas-from-the-best-book-on-engineering-management-c3caa706f77c
100	The origin of blameless post mortems	https://www.etsy.com/codeascraft/blameless-postmortems
101	The unspoken skill of finesse	https://open.substack.com/pub/weskao/p/the-unspoken-skill-of-finesse
102	Tying Engineering Metrics to Business Metrics	https://icchasethi.medium.com/tying-engineering-metrics-to-business-metrics-f4df7651e026
103	What is good retention	https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-good-retention-issue-29
104	What makes a good manager at Google	https://addyo.substack.com/p/effective-engineering-managers
105	Why Engineers Hate Their Managers	https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/06/24/why-engineers-hate-their-managers-and-what-to-do-about-it/
106	Your manager wants you to manage him	https://mgmt.beehiiv.com/p/your-managers-dirty-little-secret-they-want-you-to-manage-them

Books

#	Title	Author
1	The Everything Store	Brad Stone
2	Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth	Frank Slootman
3	An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management	Will Larson
4	High Output Management	Andrew Grove
5	Atomic Habits	James Clear
6	Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager	James Stanier
7	Crossing the Chasm	Geoffrey Moore
8	Deep Work	Cal Newport
9	Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products	Marty Cagan
10	Extreme Ownership	Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
11	From Worst to First	Gordon Bethune
12	Hit Refresh	Satya Nadella
13	How Big Things Get Done	Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner
14	Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion	Robert Cialdini
15	Intercom on Jobs to be Done	Intercom
16	It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work	Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
17	Competing Against Luck	Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall & David S. Duncan
18	Leading Snowflakes	Oren Ellenbogen
19	Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)	Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
20	Never Split the Difference	Chris Voss
21	No Rules Rules	Reed Hastings
22	Hackers & Painters	Paul Graham
23	Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams	Tom DeMarco & Tim Lister
24	Radical Candor	Kim Scott
25	Setting the Table	Danny Meyer
26	The Five Dysfunctions of a Team	Patrick Lencioni
27	The Almanack of Naval Ravikant	Eric Jorgenson
28	The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well	Michael Lopp
29	The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life	Steven Bartlett
30	The Dichotomy of Leadership	Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
31	The Goal	Eliyahu M. Goldratt
32	The Hard Thing About Hard Things	Ben Horowitz
33	The Making of a Manager	Julie Zhuo
34	The Mom Test	Rob Fitzpatrick
35	The Mythical Man-Month	Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
36	The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant	Tae Kim
37	Turn the Ship Around!	L. David Marquet
38	Work Rules!	Laszlo Bock

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to add or improve skills.

Each SKILL.md should:

• Use valid YAML frontmatter
• Keep name equal to the directory name
• Keep description under 1024 characters
• Stay under 500 lines
• Read em-context before giving personalized advice
• Prefer concise, direct, manager-ready output