Iluvatar – classifies an app idea into CS terms before any tech gets named

RudVlad473 released iluvatar, a Claude Code skill that classifies an app idea into computer-science terms before any technology is named, emitting a schema-validated HIGH-LEVEL-ARCHITECTURE.md file that names archetypes and cross-cutting concerns but never a specific tool. The skill runs a 15-point classification pass covering state, failure, concurrency, and compliance, and requires Python 3.9+ with no pip installs. It is designed to complement Matt Pocock's grill-with-docs skill, which pressure-tests the idea first.

Conceives the world before anything is built. Ask an AI agent to architect your app and it names a tech stack before it's named the problem — Postgres, Redis, and a queue appear before anyone's asked what happens when two writes race, or what the app does when the network is down. iluvatar is a Claude Code skill that forces the boring questions first. Give it a one-sentence app idea and it runs a 15-point classification pass — state, failure, concurrency, compliance, the stuff that gets skipped — and emits HIGH-LEVEL-ARCHITECTURE.md : a frozen, schema-validated contract that names archetypes and cross-cutting concerns but never a single technology. No tool gets picked until the shape is settled. In Tolkien's legendarium, Ilúvatar conceives Middle-earth in thought, complete, before the Ainur ever sing it into being. That's the whole pitch: architecture before creation, not architecture as an afterthought to "which framework." As a Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add RudVlad473/iluvatar /plugin install iluvatar@RudVlad473 Or copy it directly — works anywhere, no plugin system required. Requires Python 3.9+ on PATH stdlib only, nothing to pip install . git clone https://github.com/RudVlad473/iluvatar mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -r iluvatar/skills/iluvatar ~/.claude/skills/ available in every project Or scoped to one project only: git clone https://github.com/RudVlad473/iluvatar mkdir -p /path/to/your/project/.claude/skills cp -r iluvatar/skills/iluvatar /path/to/your/project/.claude/skills/ On Windows PowerShell : git clone https://github.com/RudVlad473/iluvatar New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$HOME\.claude\skills" Copy-Item -Recurse iluvatar\skills\iluvatar $HOME\.claude\skills\ Then just describe your app idea, or say "run iluvatar." iluvatar classifies whatever idea you hand it — it doesn't sharpen a vague one first. Best served after Matt Pocock's grill-with-docs https://github.com/mattpocock/skills : a relentless interview that pressure-tests the idea and produces docs ADRs, a glossary as it goes, so iluvatar has something more complete to classify by the time it runs. /plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills /plugin install mattpocock-skills@mattpocock Give it: "Paste a URL, get a clean readable version saved for later, with a weekly email digest of what I haven't read yet. I want to self-host it on one small server. No browser extension or mobile app for now." iluvatar returns HIGH-LEVEL-ARCHITECTURE.md , classifying it as etl-pipeline + crud-service + background-jobs , deriving a 10-stage flow spine across write, read, and scheduled paths, and running real numbers instead of adjectives: archetypes: etl-pipeline, crud-service, background-jobs primary artifact: a saved article URL in, extracted text stored budget notes: "~7 saves/day, ~639MB total storage over a 5-year retention window botec.py , single self-hosted server..." ...and a flow spine that starts: 1. submit-url — user-entered URL → validated, canonicalized URL 2. fetch — canonicalized URL → raw HTML or a recorded fetch failure 3. extract — raw HTML → title + readable text + metadata ... Every number is tagged with where it came from — a script run, something the user stated, or an explicit assumption — so nothing in the document reads as more certain than it is. The full worked example, all six phases, is at skills/iluvatar/references/example-output.md /RudVlad473/iluvatar/blob/master/skills/iluvatar/references/example-output.md . | Tool | What it does | How iluvatar differs | |---|---|---| | BMAD Method Analyst→PM→Architect | Narrative architecture.md with tech-stack decisions already baked in, for a coding agent to read | Never names a technology; output is a schema-validated classification a tool parses by section name, not prose for an agent to interpret | | GitHub Spec Kit | Captures requirements what/why ; deliberately excludes architecture | Sits downstream of what Spec Kit deliberately skips — the architecture classification, not another requirements pass | | C4 model / Structurizr | Machine-parseable architecture models — but a human has to already know and author the model | Derives archetypes and cross-cutting concerns from a one-line idea; nothing to hand-author first | | AI requirements-elicitation tools Visure, Copilot4DevOps Elicit | Extract structured requirements/user stories from raw input | Same upstream distinction as Spec Kit — requirements, not architecture classification | No live tool was found verified 2026-08-12 that takes a free-text idea and emits a stable, schema-validated, downstream-parseable classification this way. Re-verify before leaning on this claim long after that date. Full reasoning, sources, and caveats: COMPARISON.md /RudVlad473/iluvatar/blob/master/COMPARISON.md . The 15-invariant checklist itself isn't invented from vibes, either — it started as a domain-agnostic synthesis, then got audited clause-by-clause against five named frameworks ISO/IEC 25010:2023, arc42, the AWS Well-Architected Framework, DDD strategic design, the Google SRE production-readiness taxonomy , closing three real gaps the audit found. Details and citations: COMPARISON.md /RudVlad473/iluvatar/blob/master/COMPARISON.md grounded-in-named-standards-not-invented . Phase 1's requirements scoping and capacity estimation the botec.py calculator behind the numbers above aren't original either — they're vendored from proyecto26/system-design-skills https://github.com/proyecto26/system-design-skills MIT, pinned at a specific audited commit — see . /RudVlad473/iluvatar/blob/master/skills/iluvatar/references/vendor/VENDOR.md skills/iluvatar/references/vendor/VENDOR.md Never names a technology — not a database, not a framework, not a language — anywhere except a Known Constraints line the user imposed themselves. Classification, not selection. Never writes code. Never skips a concern silently — every one of its 15 invariants is marked relevant or deferred-with-a-reason; an unlisted concern is a decision some later tool would otherwise make alone. Gates on a validator, not just a read-through — a script checks the output's structure before a human ever reviews the content, because a section a downstream parser can't find is a defect a human review won't catch. MIT — see LICENSE /RudVlad473/iluvatar/blob/master/LICENSE .