architecture

Architecture is about managing change over time. Good architecture makes easy things easy and hard things possible. AI-generated code amplifies existing patterns—good or bad. Understand existing codebase structure before proposing changes. Check for established patterns. Follow them unless explicitly changing. Skill-specific: skills/architecture/reference/architecture-research.md

<core_principles>

1. FOLLOW EXISTING PATTERNS: Don't introduce new patterns without justification.
2. INTERFACE STABILITY: Changing interfaces breaks everything. Stabilize them first.
3. MODULAR BOUNDARIES: Clear separation. Each module has one reason to change.
4. DEPENDENCY DIRECTION: Depend on abstractions, not concretions. Core doesn't know about edges.
5. SMALLEST CHANGE: Prefer minimal changes that achieve the goal. </core_principles>

<ai_code_health_nexus> From research: 30%+ defect risk when AI applied to unhealthy code. AI amplifies existing patterns. If code is messy, AI makes it messier. Before adding AI to a codebase:

1. Identify health score (coupling, complexity, test coverage)
2. Fix critical health issues first
3. Establish clear interfaces
4. Then apply AI within those boundaries </ai_code_health_nexus>

<design_heuristics>

• If you can't explain it simply, the design is too complex
• Three concrete examples before abstraction
• Composition over inheritance
• Make illegal states unrepresentable
• Parse, don't validate </design_heuristics>

<anti_patterns>

• Premature abstraction (abstract before 3 concrete uses)
• Leaky abstractions (implementation details bleeding through)
• Circular dependencies
• God objects (one class doing everything)
• Feature envy (methods that use another class more than their own) </anti_patterns>