cloudthinker-ai Architecture Review Board Skill
Architecture review of PR/RFC #{{ pr_number }} in {{ repository }} ({{ change_category }}).
Workflow
Phase 1 — Problem and Solution Assessment
PROBLEM STATEMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Problem clearly defined: YES / NO
[ ] Business justification provided: YES / NO
[ ] Success criteria measurable: YES / NO
[ ] Scope well-bounded: YES / NO
[ ] Alternatives considered:
Alternative | Pros | Cons | Why not chosen
──────────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────
___ | ___ | ___ | ___
___ | ___ | ___ | ___
Phase 2 — Scalability and Performance
SCALABILITY REVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Scale requirements:
- Current load: ___
- Expected load (1 year): ___
- Expected load (3 years): ___
- Peak load multiplier: ___
[ ] Scaling strategy:
[ ] Horizontal scaling supported
[ ] Stateless design (or state externalized)
[ ] Database scaling plan (read replicas, sharding)
[ ] Caching strategy defined
[ ] Rate limiting configured
[ ] Performance:
[ ] Latency requirements defined
[ ] Throughput requirements defined
[ ] Performance testing plan included
[ ] Capacity planning documented
Phase 3 — Technology Selection
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] New technologies introduced:
Technology | Rationale | Team experience | Maturity
───────────────┼────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────
___ | ___ | ___ | ___
[ ] Alignment with tech radar: YES / NO
[ ] Team has skills to build and operate: YES / NO
[ ] Training plan if new technology: ___
[ ] Vendor lock-in assessment: low / medium / high
[ ] Open source vs commercial decision justified: YES / NO
[ ] License compatibility verified: YES / NO
Phase 4 — Operational Readiness
OPERATIONS REVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Deployment:
[ ] CI/CD pipeline defined
[ ] Zero-downtime deployment supported
[ ] Rollback procedure documented
[ ] Feature flag strategy for gradual rollout
[ ] Observability:
[ ] Monitoring and alerting plan
[ ] SLIs and SLOs defined
[ ] Dashboards planned
[ ] Runbooks outlined
[ ] Reliability:
[ ] Failure modes identified (FMEA)
[ ] Disaster recovery plan
[ ] Data backup strategy
[ ] Dependency failure handling
[ ] Security:
[ ] Threat model completed
[ ] Security review scheduled
[ ] Compliance requirements identified
[ ] Data classification documented
Phase 5 — Integration and Migration
INTEGRATION REVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Integration points:
System/Service | Pattern | Contract
─────────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────
___ | sync/async | ___
[ ] Migration plan:
[ ] Phased migration approach defined
[ ] Dual-write/dual-read period planned
[ ] Data migration strategy documented
[ ] Rollback at each phase possible
[ ] Timeline with milestones: ___
[ ] Impact on existing systems:
[ ] Breaking changes to downstream consumers: YES / NO
[ ] API versioning strategy: ___
[ ] Communication plan for affected teams: YES / NO
Counter-Rationalizations
| Shortcut | Counter | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "We can skip some steps for this case" | Adapt the workflow steps, don't skip them | Skipped steps are where incidents and oversights originate |
| "The user seems to already know what to do" | Complete all workflow phases with the user | The workflow catches blind spots that experience alone misses |
| "This is a minor case, full process is overkill" | Scale the process down, don't turn it off | Minor cases become major when unstructured; the process scales, not disappears |
| "I'll fill in the details later" | Complete each section before moving on | Deferred details are forgotten; real-time capture is more accurate |
| "The template output isn't necessary" | Always produce the structured output format | Structured output enables comparison, audit trails, and handoff to other teams |
Output Format
Produce an architecture review report with:
- Decision recommendation (approve / approve with conditions / defer / reject)
- Scalability assessment (meets requirements / concerns / gaps)
- Technology evaluation (aligned / deviation justified / not recommended)
- Operational readiness (ready / gaps identified / not ready)
- Conditions for approval (required changes before proceeding)
- Follow-up reviews scheduled for implementation checkpoints