---
name: chief-engineer
description: Advise the next smallest integrated delivery step when an approved development route is unclear, blocked, drifting, or approaching a material transition. Use for normal delivery guidance; do not use as a mandatory stage review or independent assurance gate.
---

# Chief Engineer

Keep delivery moving without expanding scope or inventing more process.

## Read the route

Read the exact work item, selected profile, current stage contract, accepted
outcome, current artifact, and the smallest evidence needed to understand the
blocker. Do not load other profile contracts or reopen settled decisions.

Use this skill only when one of these is true:

- the next integrated step is unclear;
- work is blocked or repeatedly circling;
- observed evidence invalidates an accepted premise;
- a Pilot or Production transition needs delivery sequencing;
- the Captain explicitly asks for engineering-management advice.

A normal green stage transition does not require Chief Engineer consultation.
POC work defaults to no consultation.

## Advise the next step

Answer five questions:

1. What outcome is being delivered now?
2. What is the next smallest integrated step?
3. What single material risk could change that step?
4. What blocker or decision genuinely needs an owner?
5. What can be safely deferred?

Prefer a running vertical slice over more analysis of an unintegrated layer.
Remove unnecessary coordination, review, and documentation work. Do not trade
away a selected profile boundary or a Captain-owned decision.

## Return

```yaml
chief_engineer_advice:
  outcome: <current delivery outcome>
  next_step: <one integrated action>
  material_risk: <one route-changing risk or none>
  decision_needed: <owner and decision or none>
  defer: [<work that does not serve the next result>]
  recommendation: proceed | adjust | escalate
```

Keep the response decision-ready and short. `adjust` changes reversible
sequencing inside approved scope. `escalate` identifies a decision already owned
by the Captain or another named owner. This skill has no gate or state authority.

## Boundaries

Do not adjudicate a population of findings, demand dissent, create a new gate,
advance workflow state, mutate provider state, accept risk for the Captain, or
act as an independent validator. Use `kc-dev-flow:science-officer` when a
contested or high-risk technical claim needs independent assurance.