Pace
All teams / Engineering

Engineering

Reviews, standups, incident response, architecture decisions, tech debt.

Engineering teams spend half their week on non-coding work: PR review, standup updates, on-call, architecture conversations, docs. Pace tightens each one. The engineering plugin works standalone (no required connectors), and pairs with /data:* for the 'why is this slow' questions that show up in reviews.

Install for Engineering

The full engineering starter set is 3 plugins. Pick the install path that matches you.

Cowork (no terminal)

Click each link below; Cowork opens and asks you to confirm. Restart Cowork after the last one so connectors register.

  1. 1 Install engineering
  2. 2 Install data
  3. 3 Install productivity
After the last install, restart Cowork. The MCP servers (Slack, HubSpot, etc.) only register cleanly on a fresh app start. Quit the app fully, then reopen it.

Terminal (one command)

If you have claude on your PATH already, this installs the whole set in one go.

npx pace-tools install engineering data productivity

pace-tools wraps claude plugin install; runs claude plugin marketplace add GoldenBerry-SO/Pace automatically if you haven't registered the marketplace yet.

Plugins to install

Pick from this set for the role. Primary plugins are essential; companions multiply value.

  • engineering primary

    Code review, architecture decisions, incident response, tech debt audits, deploy checklists, testing strategy, docs.

    claude plugin install engineering@pace
  • data companion

    When reviews touch performance, SQL, or analytics; pair with /data:* to ground in real numbers.

    claude plugin install data@pace
  • productivity companion

    Standups, daily focus blocks, memory of past architecture decisions.

    claude plugin install productivity@pace

Connectors to set up

Claude prompts to authorize each one the first time a relevant skill fires. You only do this once per project.

  • (none required for engineering itself)
  • Snowflake / Databricks / BigQuery (via /data:*)
  • Linear / Jira / Slack (via /productivity:*)

Workflows

Common ways teams use these plugins day to day. Each one is a starting point; adapt the prompt to your context.

  • Pre-review code review

    Runs a structural review before requesting human review. Catches the obvious stuff: dead code paths, missing tests, naming inconsistencies, broken contracts.

    /engineering:code-review this PR

  • Standup summary

    Generates your async standup by reading Linear tickets touched, git commits pushed, and what's blocking.

    /engineering:standup what's blocking me today

  • Architecture decision

    Pros/cons + recommendation on a system choice. Writes the ADR (architecture decision record) in your repo format.

    /engineering:architecture should we use NATS or Kafka for the event bus

  • Incident response

    Triage playbook: diagnostic questions, likely causes, mitigation order, comms template. Useful at 3am.

    /engineering:incident-response p1 ingestion lag

  • Tech debt audit

    Scans a directory or service and ranks debt by effort vs payoff. Surfaces stuff you keep meaning to fix.

    /engineering:tech-debt audit this directory

  • Documentation gap fix

    Reads a module and writes the missing docs: contracts, edge cases, gotchas.

    /engineering:documentation for the rate-limiter middleware

Just say it

You don't have to memorize slash commands. After installing, type natural sentences into Claude and the right skill will fire. Each row is a real example.

  • You say

    Review this PR before I tag the team

    Claude runs /engineering:code-review
  • You say

    Catch anything I missed before I open the PR

    Claude runs /engineering:careful-review
  • You say

    Diagnose this race condition in checkout

    Claude runs /engineering:diagnose
  • You say

    Write tests for the new checkout flow using TDD

    Claude runs /engineering:tdd
  • You say

    Spec the feature so we can ship it as stacked PRs

    Claude runs /engineering:spec
  • You say

    Commit my changes and open a PR

    Claude runs /engineering:ship-pr

Tips & tricks

Field-tested patterns from teams that have already shipped a quarter or two on these plugins.

  • Self-review before requesting review

    /engineering:code-review before you tag a human. Catches naming and silly mistakes; the human gets to focus on intent.

  • Pin the deploy-checklist

    Use /engineering:deploy-checklist before any prod push. Pin it (via the Pace router pin.mjs) once your team standardizes.

  • Testing strategy upfront

    /engineering:testing-strategy when scoping a feature, not when writing tests. Saves rewrite cycles.

  • Pair with /data for perf reviews

    When the PR touches anything that hits the DB, run /data:write-query against staging to verify the query plan before merging.

  • Incident response > heroics

    /engineering:incident-response has saved hours at 3am. Beats inventing a playbook under pressure.

  • ADR convention sticks

    /engineering:architecture writes ADRs in a stable format. Adopt the format and don't fight it; consistency is the point of ADRs.

See also