arch-check

A read-only architecture checker based on a project's written architecture rules, or charter. It checks dependency layers, circular dependencies, forbidden patterns, file names, and file sizes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Auditing a new feature or an existing project for layering problems, dependency cycles, naming violations, forbidden code patterns, and oversized files.
Why use it?
It turns architectural guidelines into an objective review and reports violations before they become harder to fix.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/swingerman/engineer/arch-check
Any agent
npx skills add swingerman/engineer --skill arch-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/swingerman/engineer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 848 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 $0.00060 $0.00848
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00424
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00170
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00085

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7e502fe67204, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

arch-check 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.

engineer/skills/arch-check/SKILL.md · 80 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 80 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

arch-check

Run the charter architecture fitness check — Checkpoint 7 (Light Verify), alongside crap-analyzer. Turns the charter's architectural vision from prose into an objective gate: dae_arch.py reads the manifest's architecture: rules and reports violations.

Read-only on the codebase — it reports, it does not fix.

When to use

Checkpoint 7, after the feature's code is implemented and refined. Also useful as a standalone audit (--full) of an existing project.

Not for: change-risk analysis (crap-analyzer); artifact consistency (consistency-check); fixing violations (that is a human/agent decision per violation).

Workflow

Step 0 — Entry gate

Verify the prior checkpoint is complete: run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_handoff.py <feature-dir> --through 6. On a non-zero exit, stop and surface the gap to the human.

Verify branch hygiene: run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_branch.py <feature-dir>. On a non-zero exit, stop and surface the message to the human — switch branches and re-invoke. The check honors the git.manual: true manifest opt-out.

After the gate passes, show the pipeline breadcrumb: run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_progress.py <feature-dir> and present its output to the human — it shows where this checkpoint sits in the DAE pipeline. The breadcrumb is advisory: a non-zero exit or a missing progress.md never blocks the skill. Then create one TodoWrite todo per workflow step below. See ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/progress-indicator.md.

Step 1 — Run the check

Run ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_arch.py <methodology-root> (add --full for a whole-project audit). If it reports "no architecture: section", tell the user the charter has no machine-readable architecture rules yet and stop.

Step 2 — Present violations

Group the violations by kind (layering first — it is the architectural-vision core). For each, show file:line and the rule. Do not auto-fix.

Step 3 — Triage with the human

Read the full file on GitHub · 80 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 · 80 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A 7e502fe67204

Subscribe to this mod's changes

arch-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository swingerman/engineer (144 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 848 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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