architect-fast

name	architect-fast
description	Use when the user asks to architect-fast a change, run the light factory lane, or factory-build a small goal — a few files, roughly one sitting, at most ~3 parallel issues — into a specced plan with parallel builders, one builder-performed closing review-and-fix, and a single PR. Same loop shape as /architect with the per-issue grading machinery removed; for larger, riskier, or many-issue work use /architect instead.
effort	high

Architect Fast

You are the orchestrator for the light factory lane: /architect's loop shape — spec, parallelizable issues, fresh isolated builders, one closing PR — with the per-issue grading machinery removed. Reuse /architect's machinery by pointer, never by duplication: skills/architect/dispatch.md (## Model alias table, ## Builder block template, ## Preflight and postflight dispatch, ## Status display) and skills/architect/tracker.md (## Config) govern models, dispatch, merges, status, and tracker modes, except where a substitution below names a deviation.

Size ceiling: at most 3 builder issues and ~400 changed lines expected. If the honest decomposition needs more, stop and recommend /architect — a hard stop, human ruling, never silently absorbed.

Rules kept

Unchanged from /architect: the tracking issue is the coordination log; builders are fresh, worktree-isolated, and never commit; the orchestrator owns commits, merges, and closure; tier is set at decomposition, never moved by a failure; the timed-ruling protocol times every human question and no approval gate exists anywhere; execution-conflict checks are mandatory at PHASE 0; no silent fallback — every precondition, blocker, and substitution is recorded.

Relaxed by design

• No strategist subagents — no adversarial spec, decomposition, or final review. The orchestrator writes the spec itself and to-issues runs straight off it.
• No frozen check files, no check-runner: issue-body acceptance criteria, builder-run tests, and the closing builder review carry the weight.
• No watchdog script — a per-wave timed background sleep is the stall-fallback wake.
• "Nobody grades their own work" (Hard Rules 3 and 4) is deliberately relaxed: the closing review is one fresh builder subagent that both reviews and fixes, with no check-runner over its work — the orchestrator's merge through postflight and the closing PR are the later eyes. Product docs land in integrate's docs pass, same as /architect.

Procedure

1. Ground. Load codebase-design first and use its glossary exactly. Read authority docs in /architect's order. Tracker preflight and the backend canary are unchanged (skills/architect/tracker.md ## Preflight per mode). No ground script mid-run — its reconcile assumes checkrun evidence this lane never produces; read the ≤3-issue frontier from tracker state. skills/architect/status.ps1|.sh works unchanged; the manifest sets lane: architect-fast so status renders the light-lane graph.

2. Intake. No question batch; anything genuinely open becomes a timed ruling (skills/architect/SKILL.md ## Timed-ruling protocol) recorded as an assumption. No adversarial spec review. Write the spec with to-spec on its exact template, one named substitution: ## Validation strategy names this lane's gates — builder-run tests plus the closing builder review-and-fix — never the check-runner or closing review. Create the tracking issue and manifest; cut the factory branch. Append status breadcrumbs to docs/runs/<run>/status-events.jsonl with the same JSONL contract as /architect, using fast-lane stages where they differ: publish, issues, dispatch-head, timed-wake, and closing-test.

3. Decompose. to-issues cuts at most 3 tracer-bullet vertical-slice issues with a file-disjoint frontier and producer interface contracts, two named substitutions: an acceptance-criteria section replaces the check path, and the change-skeleton is optional. Above the ceiling, stop and recommend /architect.

4. Factory loop. Dispatch every ready issue as a fresh worktree-isolated builder — same agent def, preloads, model resolution, never-commit rule, PHASE-0 execution conflicts, raw-evidence reports (skills/architect/dispatch.md ## Builder block template), one substitution: the frozen-checks section becomes acceptance criteria quoted from the issue body. At dispatch, record each job's dispatch-head SHA on its issue — the job's ffcheck target and postflight base (freeze_sha field, same semantics). Each wave arms one timed background sleep as the stall-fallback wake; on a fallback wake with jobs in flight, judge liveness from report growth directly. On DONE, merge through postflight (skills/architect/dispatch.md ). On BLOCKED, answer durably and respawn fresh.

Stage skills invoked explicitly: codebase-design, to-spec, to-issues, integrate. frozen-checks, adversarial-review, and final-review are intentionally not invoked in this lane.

Substitutions

Reused contract	Fast-lane substitution
to-spec's validation-strategy naming	Builder-run tests + the closing builder review-and-fix
to-issues' per-issue check path	Acceptance-criteria section in the issue body
to-issues' mandatory change-skeleton	Optional
Builder template's frozen-checks section	Acceptance criteria quoted from the issue body
Postflight's freeze_sha diff base	The job's recorded dispatch-head SHA
Ground script's frontier line	Read from tracker state; no ground script mid-run
Watchdog	One per-wave timed background sleep
Final review	One fresh builder review-and-fix subagent fed the test-pass output; fixes merge through postflight
Integrate's graded-RUN verification set	Empty by design; validator-suite verification still runs

Maintenance

Re-read against each new model generation; the size ceiling and Rules kept are invariants, the rest is prunable. Re-run docs/evals/trigger-prompts.md. No feature ships without evidence in DESIGN.md.