architect

architect is a skill for Claude Code from alonbaron/claude-skills. It costs 115 tokens per session (2,155 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A documentation system for designing software before writing code. It creates a source of truth, a roadmap, a task workflow, and supporting architecture documents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting an app, feature, or workstream that needs documented requirements, invariants, design decisions, and staged implementation work.
Why use it?
It helps teams agree on data, rules, failure cases, and interfaces before implementation. This reduces conflicting decisions and undocumented assumptions.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the alon-skills plugin — 6 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting an app, feature, or workstream that needs documented requirements, invariants, design decisions, and staged implementation work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect
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.

Any agent
npx skills add alonbaron/claude-skills --skill architect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alonbaron/claude-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alon-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

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 architect

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for architect

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alonbaron/claude-skills/architect.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 115 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,155 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00115 $0.02155
Opus 5 $0.00057 $0.01077
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00431
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00215

Measured 10d ago against content hash 0194626f63d8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

architect 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 10d 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/architect/SKILL.md · 164 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 164 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architect

Design and document the system before building it — in the house doc format, kept in sync at all times. Output is documents, not code.

Principles, enforced in the docs: model first (data + invariants before framework) · enforce every invariant at the core, ideally at two boundaries (app-layer validation and a DB constraint) — never "the frontend handles it" · design failure paths as deliberately as happy paths · small, reversible, independently shippable steps · one source of truth — everything else derives from it and links back.

Proactive use

If a new app, feature, or workstream is starting and no current design docs exist, invoke this without being asked: announce in one line — "Running architect: " — and proceed. Never ask permission to run the skill; the 1–3 blocking questions below are still allowed.

The four artifacts (+ the modular set)

Authority flows top-down. A fact lives in exactly one place and is linked from everywhere else.

  1. SOURCE_OF_TRUTH.md (apex) — the canonical, slow-changing truth: scope & non-goals · the domain model · the invariants and where each is enforced · the load-bearing decisions as mini-ADRs (decision · why · alternative rejected). If anything conflicts with this file, this file wins. Keep it tight — it is the contract, not the manual.
  2. ARCHITECTURE_ROADMAP.md — architecture + phased plan derived from the SoT. Header block (Version · Status · Owner), then §-numbered: 0 Executive context · 1 Tech stack (Layer · Tech · Role table) · 2 Data schema (low-level: columns, types, constraints, indexes, JSONB shapes, decision call-outs) · 3 Backend (structure · services · API-contract table) · 4 Frontend · 5 Execution phases · 6 Non-functional requirements.
  3. docs/architecture/00-index.md + 01-…NN (larger projects only) — agent-friendly modular extracts of the roadmap sections. The index carries a File Map table (# · file · covers · roadmap §), a Dependency Graph (ASCII), and a Quick Reference ("I need to work on X → read these files").
  4. TODO_WORKFLOW.md — the task tracker. Status legend ([ ] · [IN PROGRESS] · [FINISHED - PENDING MERGE] · [MERGED/DONE] · [BLOCKED]); tasks grouped by phase; each row: # · Task · Architecture Ref (linked to the §/file) · Status · Branch.
  5. CLAUDE.md (project root) — the rules file Claude Code auto-loads: operating rules + the sync protocol (template below). One markdown file — no .clauderules, no .cursorrules, no import shim.

Read the full file on GitHub · 164 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. 10d ago First seen · 164 lines · 115 tokens per session scan A 0194626f63d8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

architect is a skill published in the GitHub repository alonbaron/claude-skills (13 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 115 tokens to every session and 2,155 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-30.

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