Overview

Architect is an architecture linter for Next.js App Router projects written in TypeScript. It answers one question that other tools do not: given this stack's blueprint, is this file in the layer it belongs to?

See it work

npx @levironexe/architect check .

✗ src/app/projects/page.tsx:24
    Database client imported directly in a page or layout component.
    → Move the query into lib/ and call that function from the page.
      direct_db_in_page

✗ src/components/TaskCard.tsx:3
    components/ imports from app/, which inverts the dependency direction.
    → Pass the value in as a prop, or move the shared code to lib/.
      illegal_import

⚠ src/app/dashboard/layout.tsx:1
    'use client' on a layout turns the whole subtree into a client bundle.
    → Remove the directive here and mark only the interactive leaf component.
      use_client_everywhere

3 violations (2 critical, 1 warning) · 18 files checked · nextjs-app-router

Exit code is 1 when anything critical is found, so it fails CI with no extra configuration. No install, no config file, no API key, no model call — the rules are deterministic.

Why it exists

Every other tool in this category reports what is wrong: dead code, duplication, circular dependencies, complexity hotspots. None of them tells you where the code should have gone.

The enforcement engines for that do exist — eslint-plugin-boundaries and dependency-cruiser — but you have to write every rule yourself, and eslint-config-next explicitly will not enforce that data access goes through a data layer.

Architect ships those rules for your stack, already written. Ten of them are checked deterministically; one stays as guidance for a coding agent to read.

How it works

architect check .
      │
      ├─ Detects the stack        → nextjs-app-router
      ├─ Parses every TS/TSX file → imports, calls, directives, members
      ├─ Evaluates the blueprint  → 10 detect: rules + required directories
      └─ Reports violations       → file, line, what to do, rule id

Rules live in the blueprint (skills/stacks/nextjs-app-router/SKILL.md) as machine-readable detect: blocks, not in TypeScript. Adding a rule means writing YAML and two fixtures. See Contributing.

Where to go next

• Commands — check, verify, init, flags and exit codes
• Rules — all eleven rules and the detect: schema
• Integrations — GitHub Actions and the Claude Code hook
• Contributing — how to add a rule

Non-goals

Architect checks one thing: whether your code is in the right place. It deliberately does not do these, and will not grow into them — each one is already solved better elsewhere:

If you want a broad codebase scanner, use fallow. Architect answers a narrower question that scanners do not: given this stack's blueprint, is this file in the layer it belongs to?