/architect

name: architect
description: "Settle types and module shape before cross-boundary code — competing designs explored in parallel, compared on API surface and invariants, decision recorded with rejected alternatives and an accepted-deviations register."
aliases: []
metadata:
  credits:
    design-exploration: pstack
    author: Lauren Tan
    url: "https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/pstack"
    port: pstack-claude
    port-author: Michael Denyer
    port-url: "https://github.com/michael-denyer/pstack-claude"

Architect

Design before steel. When a change crosses a function boundary, explore competing shapes first and commit to one with a written rationale — the cheapest moment to reject a design is before it has code on it.

When to use

• new module, new API, changed signature other files call
• a data shape that more than one consumer will encode
• the user asks for a design or says "before you build this..."

When not to use

• contained single-file changes — build directly
• reviewing an existing design — `review`

Workflow

1. **Frame**: name the problem in one sentence, the consumers of the design, and the invariants it must preserve. 2. **Explore 2-3 competing designs in parallel** — dispatch `oh-my-claudecode:architect` subagents, each producing: the core types, the module boundary, the API surface, and how each invariant is preserved. Distinct shapes, not variations of one idea. 3. **Compare** criterion by criterion: API surface size, boundary clarity, invariant preservation, migration cost, deletion ease. Tie-break toward the smaller API and cleaner boundary (`minimal-code-discipline`). 4. **Record the decision**: chosen design, why the losers lost, and an accepted-deviations register the implementation will reconcile against (each deviation: what changed vs the sketch, and the acceptance source). 5. **Hand off**: the design and its invariant list travel with the `execute` brief; implementation reconciles deviations rather than rediscovering the design.

Rules

• No design is recorded without at least one rejected alternative and the

reason it lost.

• Types before wiring; data shapes before functions that move them.
• The output is a design plus a decision record, never an implementation.