improve-codebase-architecture

A review process for finding architectural improvements in a codebase and presenting them in an HTML report before discussing the option you choose. Architecture here means how code is divided and connected.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explore domain models, interfaces, adapters, seams, and recorded design decisions when planning a deeper architectural change.
Why use it?
It exposes modules that are hard to understand, test, or navigate, and turns those problems into focused refactoring opportunities instead of a full rewrite.

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/vvedantb/eva/improve-codebase-architecture
Any agent
npx skills add vvedantb/eva --skill improve-codebase-architecture
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vvedantb/eva

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,203 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 83% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00032 $0.01203
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00602
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00241
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00120

Measured 3d ago against content hash 0026900866ed, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

improve-codebase-architecture 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 3d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

83% identical to improve-codebase-architecture — 41 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/improve-codebase-architecture/SKILL.md · 67 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 67 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Improve Codebase Architecture

Surface architectural friction and propose deepening opportunities — refactors that turn shallow modules into deep ones. The aim is testability and AI-navigability.

This command is informed by the project's domain model and built on a shared design vocabulary:

  • Run the /codebase-design skill for the architecture vocabulary (module, interface, depth, seam, adapter, leverage, locality) and its principles (the deletion test, "the interface is the test surface", "one adapter = hypothetical seam, two = real"). Use these terms exactly in every suggestion — don't drift into "component," "service," "API," or "boundary."
  • The domain language in CONTEXT.md gives names to good seams; ADRs in docs/adr/ record decisions this command should not re-litigate.

Process

1. Explore

Read the project's domain glossary (CONTEXT.md) and any ADRs in the area you're touching first.

Then use the Agent tool with subagent_type=Explore to walk the codebase. Don't follow rigid heuristics — explore organically and note where you experience friction:

  • Where does understanding one concept require bouncing between many small modules?
  • Where are modules shallow — interface nearly as complex as the implementation?
  • Where have pure functions been extracted just for testability, but the real bugs hide in how they're called (no locality)?
  • Where do tightly-coupled modules leak across their seams?
  • Which parts of the codebase are untested, or hard to test through their current interface?

Apply the deletion test to anything you suspect is shallow: would deleting it concentrate complexity, or just move it? A "yes, concentrates" is the signal you want.

2. Present candidates as an HTML report

Write a self-contained HTML file to the OS temp directory so nothing lands in the repo. Resolve the temp dir from $TMPDIR, falling back to /tmp (or %TEMP% on Windows), and write to <tmpdir>/architecture-review-<timestamp>.html so each run gets a fresh file. Open it for the user — xdg-open <path> on Linux, open <path> on macOS, start <path> on Windows — and tell them the absolute path.

Read the full file on GitHub · 67 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 3d ago First seen · 67 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 0026900866ed

Subscribe to this mod's changes

improve-codebase-architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository vvedantb/eva (101 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 1,203 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 83% identical to improve-codebase-architecture, differing in 41 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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