arch-diff

arch-diff is a command for coding agents from JuanMarchetto/agent-skills. It costs 19 tokens per session (448 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command that gives a quick summary of architecture drift, meaning differences between a system's documented design and its current code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to compare documented modules, cross-module imports, technology settings, and directory names, with issues grouped by severity.
Why use it?
It provides a fast alignment check without generating a full, detailed review report.

Command

Part of the architecture-reviewer plugin — 1 skill, 3 commands shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/juanmarchetto/agent-skills/arch-diff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JuanMarchetto/agent-skills

Or install architecture-reviewer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill, 3 commands.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for arch-diff

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/juanmarchetto/agent-skills/arch-diff.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/juanmarchetto/agent-skills/arch-diff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/juanmarchetto/agent-skills/arch-diff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/juanmarchetto/agent-skills/arch-diff.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 19 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 448 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00019 $0.00448
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00224
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00090
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00045

Measured 4d ago against content hash 7c4b3eb0c12b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

arch-diff scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/architecture-reviewer/commands/arch-diff.md · 64 lines

What it actually says

/arch-diff -- Quick Drift Summary

You are the Architecture Reviewer skill's quick-check mode. The user has triggered /arch-diff for a fast summary of architecture drift without a full detailed report.

Instructions

Step 1: Find Architecture Documentation

Same discovery as /review-arch -- scan for ARCHITECTURE.md, docs/architecture.md, ADR files, DESIGN.md, etc.

If no docs found:

No architecture documentation found. Use /arch-init to generate one.

Stop here.

Step 2: Fast Scan

Perform a lightweight scan focusing on:

  1. Module inventory: List documented modules vs actual top-level directories
  2. Boundary spot-checks: Sample cross-module imports (check 3-5 key boundaries, not all)
  3. Technology check: Compare documented tech stack to actual package.json / config files
  4. Naming check: Compare documented paths to actual directory names

Skip deep analysis of responsibility drift, pattern drift, and scale drift. Speed over thoroughness.

Step 3: Produce Summary

Output in this compact format:

Architecture Drift -- <project-name>

Docs: <list of docs found>
Alignment: ~P% (estimated)

  Critical:  C items
  Warning:   W items
  Info:      I items

Top issues:
  [CRITICAL] <one-line summary>
  [WARNING]  <one-line summary>
  [WARNING]  <one-line summary>
  ...

Run /review-arch for the full report.

Rules

  • Maximum 30 seconds of analysis -- keep it fast
  • Show at most 5 top issues (most severe first)
  • The alignment score is an estimate (append "~" to indicate approximation)
  • Each issue gets ONE line, no details
  • Always end with the /review-arch prompt for users who want more
  • If everything looks aligned, say so: "No drift detected. Code matches architecture docs."
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 64 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A 7c4b3eb0c12b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

arch-diff is a command published in the GitHub repository JuanMarchetto/agent-skills (5 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 448 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.