✓ Free — No signup — Results in ~60s

Your AI CTO.
Not just code review.

Hiring plans. Team structure. Architecture decisions. Dev processes for the AI era. Helmsman is the CTO brain your startup needs — start with a free repo health scan.

Try: facebook/react, vercel/next.js, or any public GitHub repo
✓ Architecture review ✓ Security vulnerabilities ✓ Tech debt score ✓ Test coverage ✓ Hiring readiness
8
Analysis dimensions
~60s
Time to full report
Free
No signup required

The Problem

Every startup needs a CTO. Most can't afford one. The alternatives are expensive, unreliable, or both.

$250,000+/year
Full-time CTO salary. Out of reach for pre-seed and seed-stage companies.
$10,000-20,000/month
Fractional CTO. Limited hours, split attention across clients, weeks-long waitlists.
Helmsman
Always on. Hiring plans, team structure, architecture decisions, dev process design, and codebase oversight. The full CTO job.

Beyond Code Review

The full CTO job. Not just the code part.

Code review is 20% of what a CTO does. Helmsman handles the other 80% — the decisions that actually determine whether your startup scales or stalls.

👥

Hiring & Team Building

Know when to hire, who to hire, and how to structure comp — before you burn runway on the wrong people.

  • When to hire engineer #1, #2, #5
  • Senior vs junior trade-offs at each stage
  • Contractor vs full-time decisions
  • Interview process and technical evaluation
🏫

Team Setup & Org Design

Structure your engineering team for your current stage, not how Google does it.

  • Org structures that work at 2, 5, 15 engineers
  • Roles and reporting lines
  • When to split into squads/pods
  • Engineering manager vs tech lead decisions
🤖

Dev Processes for the AI Era

AI agents are shipping code now. Your dev process needs to account for that — or you're leaving 10x productivity on the table.

  • Which processes still matter with AI agents
  • Code review when half the PRs are AI-authored
  • Testing strategy for AI-generated code
  • Shipping velocity without sacrificing quality
🎯

Strategic Technical Guidance

Architecture choices, vendor decisions, and technical bets that compound — or haunt you for years.

  • Build vs buy analysis for every major system
  • Tech stack selection grounded in your stage
  • Vendor evaluation and migration planning
  • Technical debt triage — what to fix now vs later

Why Now

The CTO role changed. Most founders haven't noticed yet.

AI agents write code, review PRs, deploy services. The CTO job is no longer about being the best coder in the room — it's about making the decisions that AI can't. Helmsman is built for that new reality.

01

AI writes the code

Agents handle implementation. The CTO's job is deciding what gets built and how it fits together.

02

Speed creates new risks

Shipping 10x faster means architecture mistakes compound 10x faster. You need strategic oversight, not more PRs.

03

Hiring calculus changed

One engineer + AI agents = what used to take a team of five. Helmsman helps you hire for leverage, not headcount.

04

Process is the moat

Every startup has access to the same AI tools. The teams that win have better processes around them.

Free Tool

Start with a repo health scan. See what Helmsman sees.

01

Paste

Drop any public GitHub repo URL. Helmsman reads your codebase, maps the file structure, and identifies your tech stack in seconds.

02

Analyze

AI reviews your architecture, dependencies, security posture, test coverage, CI/CD setup, documentation, and scalability patterns.

03

Report

Get a structured health report with scores, specific findings, and actionable recommendations. Share it with your team or investors.

Free Repo Scanner

8 dimensions of codebase health — one click

Architecture

File structure, separation of concerns, design patterns, and system design quality against best practices.

🔎

Code Quality

Linting configuration, TypeScript adoption, code style consistency, and anti-pattern detection.

🛡

Security

Dependency vulnerabilities, secret exposure risk, authentication patterns, and security best practices.

Testing

Test framework setup, test coverage indicators, test quality patterns, and CI test integration.

🚀

DevOps & CI/CD

Deployment configuration, continuous integration, containerization, and infrastructure as code.

📖

Documentation

README quality, inline documentation, API docs, and contribution guidelines.

📦

Dependencies

Dependency count, outdated packages, license compliance, and supply chain risk assessment.

📈

Scalability

Database patterns, caching strategies, async processing, and performance bottleneck detection.

Human CTOs charge $15K/month.
Helmsman starts at $99.

Get the strategic guidance, architecture pressure-testing, and hiring roadmaps of a world-class CTO — at 1% the cost.

Starter / Seed
Seed
$99/mo

Everything you need to keep your codebase healthy and your technical direction sharp.

Join Waitlist
What's included
  • Weekly strategic CTO briefings
  • Architecture pressure-testing
  • Unlimited repo health scans
  • Tech debt identification
  • Security & dependency audit
Enterprise
Enterprise
Contact us

White-glove CTO services for complex organizations, M&A due diligence, and team augmentation.

Get in Touch
Everything in Growth, plus
  • Dedicated CTO advisor access
  • M&A technical due diligence
  • Team augmentation planning
  • Board-level technical reporting
  • Custom integrations & workflows

Join the Waitlist for Full CTO Advisory

Be the first to know when Helmsman launches full CTO advisory. Free repo scans forever.

No spam. No credit card. Just early access.