Claude-Code-Game-Studios/.claude/skills/architecture-review/references/1-load.md

/architecture-review — Phase 1: Load Everything

Part of /architecture-review. SKILL.md names when to read this file; the settings it resolved and the rules under its later headings still apply here.

Phase 1: Load Everything

In this file:

• Phase 1a — L0: Summary Scan (fast, low tokens)
• Phase 1b — L1/L2: Targeted Section Load
• Design Documents
• Architecture Documents
• Engine Reference
• Project Standards

Phase 1a — L0: Summary Scan (fast, low tokens)

Freshness check before any scan. Locate the latest prior report — Glob docs/architecture/architecture-review-*.md and take the newest — then:

Bash: bash .claude/scripts/review-receipts.sh check "[latest-report]" docs/architecture/adr-*.md design/gdd/*.md

• Any UNRESOLVED — check this FIRST; it disqualifies every option below. One of the two globs matched no file, so that whole document class was never examined and the comparison covered less than it appears to. Say which pattern came back unresolved and stop: an ADR or GDD directory that is empty, renamed or misspelled is a finding about the project, not a reason to stand on a prior report. Never read a set of UNCHANGED lines as "everything is current" while an UNRESOLVED line is present — the set compared was not the set requested.
• Everything UNCHANGED (and no UNRESOLVED) — nothing this review reads has changed since that report; re-running reproduces it. Surface the prior report's date and verdict and offer via AskUserQuestion: [A] Stand on the prior report (Recommended) / [B] Re-run the full review anyway — guided proceeds with [A] and notes it; autonomous logs via log_decision and stands on the prior report.
• Some CHANGED/NEW — name them, then scope instead of re-running everything: recommend /architecture-review [system] (single-system mode) for just the changed systems. A full re-run stays available on request, and structural changes (a NEW ADR, a deleted file) warrant one.
• RECEIPT: NONE — no prior report, or one written before receipts existed. Proceed with the full review; this run's report will carry the first stamps.

Before reading any full document, use Grep to extract ## Summary sections from all GDDs and ADRs:

Grep pattern="## Summary" glob="design/gdd/*.md" output_mode="content" -A 4
Grep pattern="## Summary" glob="docs/architecture/adr-*.md" output_mode="content" -A 3

Fail open on a missing Summary. Establish the denominator: glob design/gdd/*.md and count N. A scan matching fewer than N means those GDDs predate ## Summary (/design-system emits it, but older GDDs lack it) — never treat an absent Summary as a system out of scope. A zero-match scan means "no GDD carries a Summary yet", not "nothing to review": full-read the unmatched set.

For single-gdd [path] mode: use the target GDD's summary to identify which ADRs reference the same system (Grep ADRs for the system name), then load only those ADRs' sections per Phase 1b. Skip unrelated GDDs entirely.

For engine mode: load ADR sections only — GDDs are not needed for engine checks. In practice this is the ## Engine Compatibility scan alone.

For coverage or full mode: proceed to Phase 1b for the full in-scope set. This is a section load, not a full-file load — see below for why, and for the narrow cases that still justify escalating to a whole document.

Phase 1b — L1/L2: Targeted Section Load

Load the sections the later phases actually consume — not whole files. This skill reads the two largest document sets in the project (every GDD and every ADR); at realistic sizes a full load of both exhausts the context window before Phase 2 starts, and most of what it loads is narrative this skill never uses.

Establish the denominator first. Glob design/gdd/*.md and count N_gdd; glob docs/architecture/adr-*.md and count N_adr. Report both. A section scan matching fewer than the denominator means those documents lack the section — never treat an absent section as an absent document. The scan narrows the read set; it never shrinks the in-scope set.

Design Documents

Phase 2 extracts technical requirements — data structures, performance constraints, engine capabilities, cross-system communication, persistence, threading, platform needs. Those live in a known set of sections; Overview and Player Fantasy are narrative and yield none.

Grep pattern="^## (Detailed Rules|Detailed Design|Formulas|Dependencies|Tuning Knobs|Acceptance Criteria)" glob="design/gdd/*.md" output_mode="content" -A 40

Accept either ## Detailed Rules or ## Detailed Design — the design standard and the GDD template disagree on the name and they denote the same required section. Full-read a single GDD only when a scanned section cross-references material outside itself, or when a GDD matched zero sections (it predates the template — read it whole and say so).

• design/gdd/systems-index.md — the authoritative list of systems; read whole (small, and it is an index)

Architecture Documents

Phases 3–5 need the traceability table, the decision itself, engine claims, and the dependency edges — not Context, Consequences, Alternatives, Migration Plan or Validation Criteria, which explain why a decision was made.

Grep pattern="^## (Status|Decision|GDD Requirements Addressed|Engine Compatibility|ADR Dependencies|Performance Implications)" glob="docs/architecture/adr-*.md" output_mode="content" -A 30

Interpret against N_adr, and distinguish the two zero-match cases — they are not the same finding:

Result	Meaning	Action
N_adr matches	Normal.	Proceed on the scanned sections.
Some ADRs match, some do not	Those ADRs are missing sections.	Record each as a structural gap in the Phase 7 report — a missing ## GDD Requirements Addressed is itself a traceability finding.
0 matches, N_adr > 0	Malformed ADRs, not "no architecture".	"[N_adr] ADRs found, none carries a scannable section — run /architecture-decision retrofit [file] on each." Do not report zero coverage; that would read as a design failure when it is a format failure.

Escalate to a full read of one ADR only when judging a conflict needs its reasoning (Phase 4) — that is a per-ADR decision, not a blanket load.

• docs/architecture/architecture.md if it exists

Engine Reference

• docs/engine-reference/[engine]/VERSION.md
• docs/engine-reference/[engine]/breaking-changes.md
• docs/engine-reference/[engine]/deprecated-apis.md
• Only the module docs the in-scope ADRs actually name — take the union of each ADR's References Consulted and Post-Cutoff APIs Used fields (already captured by the ## Engine Compatibility scan above) and read those files. Reading the whole modules/ directory loads engine subsystems the project may not use at all. If no ADR names any module, read none and note it: Phase 5 cannot cross-check engine claims that were never made.

Project Standards

• project.yaml — naming.* and performance.*; plus .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md for those keys when absent and for forbidden patterns / allowed libraries

Report a count: "Loaded [N] GDDs, [M] ADRs, engine: [name + version]."

Also read docs/consistency-failures.md if it exists. Extract entries with Domain matching the systems under review (Architecture, Engine, or any GDD domain being covered). Surface recurring patterns as a "Known conflict-prone areas" note at the top of the Phase 4 conflict detection output.

---