Agents / Skills

Architecture Sketch

Skill

Draws your system as it actually is: the components, the data flows, the trust boundaries — as maintainable text-based diagrams with a written narrative, at the altitudes different readers need.

Best for

  • Systems whose only diagram is two years stale or in someone's head
  • Onboarding, audits and due diligence asking 'how does this work?'
  • Design discussions that need a shared picture to argue about

What you give it

  • The codebase and infrastructure configuration, plus corrections where reality is not in the repo

What you get back

  • The altitude set: context (system among its neighbours), containers (deployable parts and stores), and component detail where it earns it
  • Data and trust flows drawn: what talks to what, with what, across which boundaries
  • Diagrams as text in your repo — versionable, diffable, maintainable — with the narrative that diagrams cannot carry

How it works

  1. Reads deployment configuration and code to draw what runs, not what the old slide deck believed.
  2. Layers by altitude so each reader gets their level — the auditor, the new hire and the architect need different zoom.
  3. Marks the flows that matter: synchronous vs async, data classifications crossing boundaries, the trust edges.
  4. Writes the narrative alongside: the responsibilities, the key decisions and their reasons, the known tensions.

Example

You: Sketch our architecture for the security audit and the two new hires.

Result: Three altitudes: the context diagram (your system, the payment provider, the email service, the mobile app), the container view (web app, API, worker, two databases, the queue — with the surprise that the worker writes to the web app's database directly, now visible), and component detail for the auth module the audit cares about. Trust boundaries marked; the narrative explains the three decisions everyone questions. Checked into the repo as text — the next change is a diff, not a redraw.

Limits — please read

  • Infrastructure living outside the repo (console-configured) is drawn from your answers, marked as reported.
  • A sketch is current the day it is made; text-based format makes maintenance cheap, not automatic.
  • It documents the architecture; judging it is a separate conversation the sketch finally makes possible.