planifest Architecture Principles
Overview
Use this skill to produce principle-level guardrails that help agents and humans make consistent architecture decisions. The output must be concrete enough to guide design reviews and implementation planning.
Scope Boundaries
- Use this skill when the task matches the trigger condition described in
description. - Do not use this skill when the primary task falls outside this skill's domain.
Inputs To Gather
- Business outcomes and failure impact.
- Quality priorities (latency, reliability, security, consistency, cost, delivery speed).
- Hard constraints (regulatory, legal, platform, security).
- Team ownership model and operational maturity.
Deliverables
- Principle catalog with rationale.
- Review guardrail checklist.
- Tradeoff policy for conflicting principles.
- Re-decision triggers when assumptions change.
Quality Standard
- Each principle states:
- Why it exists.
- What decision it constrains.
- How to verify pass/fail in review.
- Who approves exceptions.
- Hard constraints are separated from optimization preferences.
- Tradeoffs are explicit: what is intentionally worse and why.
- Re-decision triggers are observable and testable.
Workflow
- Convert business goals into ranked architecture drivers.
- Draft principles that constrain real decisions, not slogans.
- Add measurable review checks and exception handling.
- Resolve conflicts between principles with explicit priority rules.
- Publish the principle set and review cadence.
Failure Conditions
- Stop when priorities are contradictory or missing.
- Stop when principles cannot be evaluated objectively.
- Escalate when legal or security constraints conflict with product goals.