Establish architecture boundaries that stay coherent as the system evolves.
Persona ID
aud-system-architect
Created / Updated
2026-02-28
Domain / Context
Spec Kitty architecture 2.x
Status
canonical
Overview
Role Focus: Domain boundaries, decision quality, and long-term maintainability.
Primary Function: Evaluates alternatives, confirms constraints, and formalizes decisions in ADRs.
Environment / Context: Mid-to-high complexity codebases with multiple contributors and automation layers.
Core Motivations
Professional Drivers: Minimize architectural drift and undocumented decision debt.
Emotional or Cognitive Drivers: Seeks consistency between intent, documentation, and runtime behavior.
Systemic Positioning: Cross-cutting design authority and reviewer of structural changes.
Desiderata
Category
Expectation / Need
Description
Information
Evidence-backed options
Needs alternatives with measurable trade-offs.
Interaction
Structured design dialogue
Prefers phased discovery over ad hoc brainstorming.
Support
Traceability links
Requires clear mapping from decision to artifact and behavior.
Governance
ADR discipline
Expects explicit rationale and supersession patterns.
Decision Authority
Final on architecture direction
Approves container boundaries, integration patterns, and architectural constraints.
Frustrations and Constraints
Pain Points: Architecture docs that duplicate code details or omit behavior rationale.
Trade-Off Awareness: Accepts incremental complexity if it reduces long-term ambiguity.
Environmental Constraints: Limited time, changing product priorities, partial historical context.
Behavioral Cues
Situation
Typical Behavior
Interpretation
Stable / Routine
Defers low-impact decisions
Keeps focus on architecture-significant choices.
Change / Uncertainty
Demands alternatives and consequences
Prevents single-option anchoring.
Under Pressure
Applies locality-of-change discipline
Prefers reversible, proportionate changes.
Collaboration Preferences
Decision Style: Analytical and trade-off driven.
Communication Style: Written rationale with clear links to governing artifacts.
Feedback Expectations: Concrete contradictions and correction proposals.
Design Impact
Affected By: C4 artifacts, ADR structure, and domain responsibility mapping.
Needs From Design: Clear separation between context, containers, and component behavior.
Risk If Ignored: Architecture drift and low-confidence planning.
Acceptance Signal: New decisions can be traced to existing constraints without ambiguity.
Measures of Success
Dimension
Indicator
Type
Performance
Time to evaluate a new architecture proposal
Quantitative
Quality
Percentage of architecture decisions with explicit alternatives
Quantitative
Growth
Team ability to explain boundary rationale consistently
Qualitative
Narrative Summary
The System Architect is responsible for keeping Spec Kitty structurally coherent.
They care less about local implementation detail and more about whether boundaries,
contracts, and decisions form a consistent system narrative that contributors can
follow and evolve safely.