Self-hosted alternatives to architect

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architect

Sketch types, signatures, and module structure before code

architect is an agent skill from Cursor's plugins collection for designing code before it is written. It sketches types, function signatures, class shapes and module boundaries, with bodies left unimplemented and described in pseudocode, then waits for agreement before filling in the implementation. It can combine several model perspectives into one design, and the skill's phases are shown as a loop of ground, sketch, agree, implement, and scrap if the approach is wrong. The first phase grounds the problem: the agent builds a real mental model of every system the new code touches, using the how skill over the relevant subsystems, and where the design changes ownership or layering it also runs the why skill so the existing rationale becomes a constraint. The skill says to skip grounding only when the work is genuinely greenfield with no surrounding system. The skill is triggered by requests such as the architect command, a request to architect something, or asking for a design first. It is aimed at larger changes where the shape of the code matters more than any single function. It is listed on skills.sh, where the page shows install counts and GitHub stars for the Cursor plugins repository, and its security audits all pass. Install it with npx skills add https://github.com/cursor/plugins --skill architect.