Create Architecture Skill Research

Scope and provenance

Two readonly discovery lanes examined the canonical shared-skills snapshot e5a1d5dfdece7e526374456f4f1bf6adb0286cbb:

The evidence below describes that snapshot. Accepted decisions record the user's explicit instructions and approved implementation plan for this task on 2026-09-23; they are not claims about behavior already shipped.

Observed evidence

• Create Spec accepts grill status/log and accepted implementation/testing decisions, reads the glossary first, and retains a commit/blob URL. The spec owns requirements; planning owns task choreography.
• Folder naming resolves the routed wiki, legacy wiki, or docs/specs domain/topic directory. This supplies the sibling location before SPEC.md exists.
• Grill artifacts distinguish the decision-authority log from the status dashboard and glossary, preserve stable question IDs and explicit supersession, and keep incomplete answers open.
• Delivery routing resumes review, repair, or debugging before the current spec gate. An initial-planning check alone cannot enforce an artifact requirement on all dispatches.
• Architecture convergence gives SPEC.md accepted-target authority. Context continuity already provides typed source pointers, identity, and freshness.

Accepted user decisions

• Architecture is mandatory for every delivery. Requirements run requirements-grill → create-architecture → create-spec → write-backlog. This supersedes the optional-companion alternative. No unresolved product choice remains from discovery.

• ARCHITECTURE.md is a source-attributed design companion beside the future spec. Preserve exact accepted library versions, utilities, APIs, paths, algorithms, configuration, protocols, alternatives, and rationale. Trace decisions to current status/log/glossary/evidence identities and stable question IDs. Unknowns and contradictions return to grilling; parked items retain owner and resume trigger.

• Retain architecture and planning bookkeeping through a dedicated, path-limited commit and verified immutable remote blob before an architecture-written, agent-ready handoff. Readiness describes complete compiler inputs and retention, not a new human approval or implementation claim. The later spec incorporates accepted constraints and owns requirements, outcomes, and acceptance criteria. Both artifacts must agree with current grill decisions; plans own execution choreography.

• Every dependent delivery dispatch checks the current retained architecture/spec pair and existing backlog proof. This includes local work, resume, review, repair, debugging, closeout, and direct planning or implementation entrypoints. Missing, stale, or conflicting inputs route to requirements; architecture applicability controls convergence detail only.

• Use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English and canonical glossary terms directly, without automatic invocation of user-only wait-what. Use show-me for a system map and applicable distinct views, with source anchors and causal explanations. Visuals explain the artifact; they prove neither acceptance nor implementation. Record Mermaid validation limits. brainstorm remains the sole owner of the ten failure lenses.

• CTO feedback supplied by the user adds traceability by actual spec OUT-* and AC-* codes. Architecture first establishes stable block/flow-step selectors and source Q anchors. create-spec finalizes the many-to-many map as metadata, retains the enriched architecture, then references that exact identity in the spec. The reverse map uses spec codes without an immutable spec identity, so retention has no cycle. Delivery verifies current coverage and resolving anchors, including explicit reasons for spec items with no structural counterpart.

Inferences and conflicts

The existing context-pointer contract can carry architecture identity without a new runtime or packet schema. Planning must reconcile the detailed architecture with the spec's accepted constraints. The router's early resume branches need the same artifact check as fresh delivery. These conclusions follow from the consumer evidence above and the mandatory-artifact decision, not from an independent change in product scope.

Delivery status and next action

Canonical source is published at 1991389066f56e7297bacc5fe2cafd3858ca0ee4, tag sync/create-architecture-1991389066f5. Consumer synchronization verified all 783 source files byte-for-byte. A fresh default scaffold installed the required skills, including brainstorm. The 68 upstream, 29 CLI, and 16 wiki checks passed. The isolated compilation probe preserved exact details, resolved 3 outcome and 11 acceptance-criterion mappings, and rejected incomplete or conflicting inputs and broken mappings. Three Mermaid diagrams rendered successfully. Retention was tested with a local bare remote only; this is simulation evidence. The historical evidence above remains tied to its inspected snapshot. Baseline publication belongs to merge CI. Existing inherited CI failures remain outside this task.

The operator runbook records the accepted flow and handoff contract.