Architect Review

What it does

The Architect Review skill allows an AI agent to analyze software architectures and major design changes. It assesses designs for compliance with standards, evaluates impacts on scalability and maintainability, and provides actionable feedback based on modern architecture patterns and distributed systems principles. The skill aims to ensure architectural integrity and build robust, future-proof software systems.

When to use it

• Reviewing system architecture or major design changes before implementation.
• Evaluating the impact of a change on scalability, resilience, or maintainability.
• Assessing whether an architecture complies with established standards and patterns.
• Seeking guidance for complex systems where architectural decisions are critical.

Key capabilities

• Expertise in modern architecture patterns (microservices, event-driven architecture, domain-driven design, clean architecture).
• Knowledge of distributed systems design principles including service mesh architectures, event streaming, and resilience patterns.
• Understanding of SOLID principles and common design patterns.
• Familiarity with cloud-native architecture and container orchestration technologies (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm).
• Ability to recommend improvements with consideration for tradeoffs and next steps.

Example prompts

• "Review this proposed microservices architecture diagram, focusing on service boundaries and potential scalability bottlenecks."
• "Assess the resilience of this event-driven system design; specifically, how are circuit breakers implemented?"
• “Evaluate this layered architecture to ensure proper separation of concerns and adherence to clean architecture principles.”

Tips & gotchas

• Provide sufficient system context, goals, and constraints for accurate assessment. The skill requires adequate information to properly evaluate the design.
• Avoid using this skill for minor code reviews without architectural impact or changes local to a single module.