| 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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
