Architect.
When the question is how should this be built, not how do I write the code. The skill that forces architecture trade-offs into the open before a single line gets shipped.
6 reference docs · 88 KB installed · stryx-architect
Decisions, Patterns, Selection, Concerns.
For engineers who reach for microservices because it sounds right, then regret it at month four. This skill walks the trade-offs out loud (monolith vs microservices, CQRS vs CRUD, event-driven vs request-response), scales the decision from MVP to production load, and writes the reasoning down so the next person does not redo it from scratch.
Four recipes.
Decision records
One-page ADR template: context, decision, consequences, alternatives killed. Stored in repo, not Confluence. Anti-pattern: the verbal-only architecture decision (it disappears the day the engineer leaves).
Scale thresholds
Caching, queues, sharding, read replicas, CQRS — each gated by a number, not a vibe. Add Redis when read p99 exceeds 200ms. Shard at 80% disk. Anti-pattern: introducing Kafka because the architecture diagram needs an arrow.
Technology selection matrix
Cost vs maturity vs ops-burden grids for databases, message queues, frameworks. Anti-recommendations (when NOT to use Kubernetes, when NOT to use GraphQL).
Cross-cutting concerns
Auth, observability, secrets, rate-limiting, idempotency keys, retry semantics. Each has a default recipe + the override conditions.
It composes.
Skills compose into workflows. Architect is rarely the only skill you will use — it pairs naturally with these others in the library.
One command.
Installs only stryx-architect (skip the other 19) into ~/.claude/skills/stryx-architect/.
Free for all use.
Stryx Labs License v1.0. Use Architect in personal, commercial, internal, and production work. No attribution required.