jayden-dang Inspect Invariants
Judge whether a design (or a diff) honors the architecture invariants it relies on.
This is the semantic counterpart to audit-trace. audit-trace checks that a
Respects: ARCH-N citation points at a live invariant — existence and liveness,
deterministically, by grep. It never reads whether the design actually respects
the rule. That judgment is this skill's job, and because it is a judgment it is
advisory: its verdicts inform review, they are never a hard merge gate.
When there is nothing to check
If docs/architecture/ does not exist, there is no spine — say so once and stop.
This skill only runs where a project has opted into the architecture layer.
Inputs
- The architecture spine:
docs/architecture/INDEX.md(+ anydocs/architecture/<domain>.md). Read the invariants — each is a bold**ARCH-N**ID and one imperative rule. A struck-through~~**ARCH-N**~~is retired; ignore it. - The subject: a feature
design.md, or a diff (git diff <base>...HEAD). Collect itsRespects: ARCH-Ncitations; for a diff, also weigh invariants the changed code plainly touches even if uncited.
The judgment
For each cited invariant (and each clearly-relevant uncited one), read the rule, read what the design/diff does, and return one verdict:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| respects | The design is consistent with the invariant. |
| violates | The design does something the invariant forbids, or omits something it requires. |
| unclear | The design neither clearly honors nor clearly breaks it — a human should look. |
Every verdict carries a one-line rationale naming the invariant and the concrete spot (a design section, a file, a hunk). Do not restate the invariant as its own rationale.
Output
inspect-invariants (3 citations, spine: docs/architecture/INDEX.md)
violates ARCH-2 design.md §Cross-module sync calls the persistence module directly (invariant: only via the event bus)
respects ARCH-4 every write goes through the migration guard
unclear ARCH-5 can't tell from the design whether the cache is invalidated on write
Report all verdicts; do not drop unclear ones — they are the point. This skill
returns findings, never a pass/fail. The caller (inspect-change, build-in-waves,
define-project) decides what to do with a violates.