architecture-design

A required planning step for designing how a software change fits into the application's structure. It follows feature analysis and must be completed before breaking the work into coding tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for feature changes that require analysis, to answer architecture questions, review their effects, and align the design with the project's documented structure.
Why use it?
It exposes affected parts of the system and design decisions before code is written. This reduces the risk of implementing a feature in the wrong layer or boundary.

Cursor rule for Cursor

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 rules/vepo/issues/architecture-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vepo/issues

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 1,292 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,292 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
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 $0.01292 $0.01292
Opus 5 $0.00646 $0.00646
Sonnet 5 $0.00258 $0.00258
Haiku 4.5 $0.00129 $0.00129

Measured 2d ago against content hash b96fc57a6235, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

architecture-design 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 2d 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.

.cursor/rules/architecture-design.mdc · 100 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 100 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architecture design (phase 2)

Part of the mandatory development-process.mdc. Every feature change that requires feature analysis also requires architecture design before task break. Do not write production or test code until phases 1–4 are complete for the current changelog entry.

Answering architecture questions (AQn) updates the feature doc only — it is not development approval. Each answer triggers a mandatory impact review — see development-process.mdc § Impact review when answering open questions.

Canonical references: ARCHITECTURE.md, issues-layered-architecture.mdc, issues-bounded-contexts.mdc.

When required

Trigger Architecture design required
Any change that triggers feature analysis (change-request-analysis.mdc § When required) Yes — mandatory
Typo, comment-only, formatter, docs-only (no behaviour) No — exempt with feature analysis

No feature change skips architecture design. If feature analysis applies, architecture design applies.

Preconditions

  • Phase 1 (feature analysis) exit criteria met for the changelog entry.
  • Blocking feature questions (FQn) are answered or not valid.
  • Changelog Status: planned (or architecture-ready if revisiting design after scope change).

Process

1. Add or extend ## Architecture on the feature doc

Document the technical design for the current changelog entry. Minimum areas:

Area Document
Bounded contexts Which contexts participate; dependency direction (issues-bounded-contexts.mdc)
Packages / layers Concrete packages; Endpoint → Service → Repository map per operation
API surface Paths, HTTP verbs, Request/Response record names, auth roles
Schema / persistence Tables, columns, FKs, indexes; Flyway baseline changes
Cross-context integration CDI events, shared services — no repository calls across unrelated contexts
Frontend integration Angular routes, services, API codegen impact
Tests Endpoint tests, ArchUnit boundaries, Angular specs affected

Read the full file on GitHub · 100 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 100 lines · 1,292 tokens per session scan A b96fc57a6235

Subscribe to this mod's changes

architecture-design is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository vepo/issues (8 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 1,292 tokens to every session, about $0.0065 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.