skills-for-architects

 █████╗ ██████╗  ██████╗██╗  ██╗    ███████╗████████╗██╗   ██╗██████╗ ██╗ ██████╗
██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██╔════╝██║  ██║    ██╔════╝╚══██╔══╝██║   ██║██╔══██╗██║██╔═══██╗
███████║██████╔╝██║     ███████║    ███████╗   ██║   ██║   ██║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║
██╔══██║██╔══██╗██║     ██╔══██║    ╚════██║   ██║   ██║   ██║██║  ██║██║██║   ██║
██║  ██║██║  ██║╚██████╗██║  ██║    ███████║   ██║   ╚██████╔╝██████╔╝██║╚██████╔╝
╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝ ╚═════╝╚═╝  ╚═╝    ╚══════╝   ╚═╝    ╚═════╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═════╝

Arch Studio

A local-first framework for architecture firms to build, govern, and share their own AI-assisted workflows—use with Codex or Claude Code.

Arch Studio provides a governance layer, persistent studio and project memory, and clear extension points for firm-wide and project-specific skills. The bundled AEC skills and agents are working reference implementations and starting templates: use them directly, study their patterns, or build procedures that reflect how your own practice works.

Firm-created skills remain in the user-owned studio workspace, outside the installed plugin cache. They can stay private to a firm or project, or be developed for contribution back to the open-source project.

One plugin—as v1.5.1.2—with a shared skill catalog for Codex and Claude Code. The repository contains 4 hooks: Claude Code loads three handlers across two events, while Codex loads one ambient SessionStart hook. Claude Code also loads 8 agents and 8 rules. Created by Federico Negro in 2026 and built by ALPA (hello@alpa.llc). Copyright © 2026 Alpaca Design Lab LLC; MIT-licensed.

What’s new in 1.5.1.2

The first product pillar is now Studio, replacing the retired Governance pillar name. Studio is the product control plane for Account and access, Configuration, Standards, and Assurance. Tooling, Knowledge and Memory are unchanged. This is a content-only terminology correction: technical identifiers, directories, schemas, protocols, skills, agents, record kinds and behavior do not change. Lowercase governance remains in use when it names an actual responsibility, process, rule, policy or data-governance topic.

What’s new in 1.5.1.1

A maintenance patch: the CSI commit hook (pre-commit-spec-lint) is removed. It blocked unrelated commits whenever a date-based ID sat next to the word “spec”. CSI formatting in spec-writer and epd-to-spec is unchanged. Upgrading from 1.5.1 requires nothing.

What’s new in 1.5.1

The 61-skill catalog now separates Project Manual sections, source-faithful product cut sheets and FF&E books. Use ffe-spec-book for book assembly: the spec-book skill entry point is removed immediately, with no alias. Existing spec-book document kinds, templates and receipts retain their identities.

Studio setup offers an existing central governance policy or a reusable default. Skill Maker references the selected policy live, rereads it when a skill runs or resumes, and pauses policy-dependent actions if it cannot read it. Slide decks use the studio’s name as text, or exactly Insert Studio Name when unavailable. Document-template paths now explicitly resolve inside the studio workspace.

Skills define bounded capabilities through outcomes, domain constraints, interfaces, evidence and verification; the host executes them. Product tools will be server-side deterministic operations in 1.6 or later; this release adds no server-side execution. Manifest versions and these notes describe the source candidate; channel publication requires the separate receipts in the release guide.

What’s new in 1.5.0

Arch Studio 1.5.0 is harness-native: every bundled skill is a complete specification that Claude Code or Codex performs with its own tools, with no bundled script to run and no runner to install. It adds fifteen skills (FF&E and specification, firm operations, document registration and Norma coordination), original-source navigation under corpus/, and CSV project registers.

Breaking: new studios and projects use DOCUMENTS.csv, CHANGES.csv, SCHEDULE.csv, TASKS.csv, TIME.csv and INVOICES.csv in place of the 1.4.x TASKS.md and TIMELOG.md. The release is forward-only; existing workspaces are not converted. See CHANGELOG.md.

Foundation organization and delivery

Arch Studio packages source and capability catalogs under corpus/, maintainer tools under tools/, skills under skills/, practice clusters under clusters/, and workspace contracts under studio/. These directories support the four pillars below; they are not a second pillar taxonomy. Actual firm and project records remain in the user's workspace.

The same content is also delivered as a hosted MCP service under its own version. Install the plugin or connect the MCP, not both: the MCP delivers instructions, does not execute skills and has no access to local files, and this plugin ships no MCP server entry. See release delivery and acceptance.

What’s new in 1.4.5

A packaging fix for Claude Desktop installation. Teaching examples and the Skill Maker template now live outside the installable skills/ tree, and the learning material points to the canonical /as:tasklist skill instead of bundling a second skill with the same name. Recursive checks prevent misplaced skill manifests and canonical/example name overlap from returning.

Compatibility note: ascii-name and clean-downloads were documented as commands in 1.4.4 even though they were course examples stored inside the installable tree. They are source examples, not installed commands, in 1.4.5. If you used either command, copy its directory from assets/learn-examples/ into your user-owned skills directory, rename SKILL.example.md to SKILL.md, and adapt it as a custom skill. No project or studio data migration