Archcore

tom@tomrochette.com (Tom Rochette) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Archcore is the archcore-ai org’s Apache-2.0 Go CLI plus per-agent plugins that keep a project’s specs, plans, decisions, and rules as typed Markdown files under .archcore/ in Git, and drive coding agents through plan, document, and review commands that read and enforce them.

Its distinctive move is the two-sided review verdict: /archcore:review compares the branch against the documents and returns code-wrong when the code broke a standing document, or spec-wrong when the document is the one out of date, so the tool names the guilty side instead of handing a human a pile of findings.

What it is
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An install script plus archcore init that adds the CLI and connects the agents you choose through MCP and hooks: plugins for Claude Code, Codex CLI, and GitHub Copilot CLI, native support for Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Roo Code, and Cline, and one extra setup step for Cursor. The workflow is four skills: /archcore:init reads the repository and proposes the first documents (or imports existing CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, and rule files), /archcore:plan writes the spec, examples, and tasks a change needs, /archcore:document turns one sentence into a linked, typed decision or rule, and /archcore:review checks the branch against all of it before merge. The package sizes itself to the change: a small fix gets no documents, a settled choice gets a decision record, a migration gets a plan, a multi-capability initiative gets a PRD and one spec per capability. Documents carry their type in the filename (rate-limiting.spec.md, token-bucket-in-redis.adr.md), link to related documents, and version with the code, and the project’s own .archcore/ tree is the published example.

Status
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Active and young: 71 stars and 13 forks since creation on 2026-04-05, pushed 2026-10-16, Apache-2.0, with v0.13.1 (2026-10-16) the newest of a release train that added review of unpushed default-branch work and durable-context capture, as of 2026-10-21 (GitHub API).

The independent footprint is empty: a Hacker News search returns no thread about it (the query only matches unrelated ARM chipset posts), so adoption rests on its own site, docs, and Discord/Telegram channels, and the bilingual English and Russian docs say the early community is regional. It entered this category’s scan as the skills worker’s 2026-10-20 cross-category flag.

Strengths
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The review verdict names the side that is wrong, which is the decision every other convergence mechanism in this category leaves to a human.
Ceremony sizing is built into the packaging logic, not chosen by the user, the same answer BMad and cc-sdd give but applied per document package.
The context is plain typed Markdown in Git, readable without the tool, and any MCP-speaking agent can read and write it, so the artifacts outlive the harness choice.
The import path (/archcore:init import) turns an existing CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md setup into the document model instead of starting from zero.

Cautions
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71 stars, a pre-1.0 v0.13 line, and zero independent coverage mean nothing here is validated by anyone but its steward.
The steward is a young company org (8 public repositories, site, docs, and community channels of its own) with no stated business model, so the free tool’s durability is an open question.
Review only checks what the documents cover; a branch touching undocumented behavior gets checked against decisions and rules alone, and the tool’s answer is to offer recording, not to guarantee coverage.
The four-skill flow assumes the human keeps recording decisions as they happen; nothing schedules the re-check of an accepted decision that later went stale.

Pricing
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Free and open source under Apache-2.0. No paid tier is published anywhere in the repo, site, or docs, as of 2026-10-21.

Compared to
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OpenSpec: both keep living specs in the repo; OpenSpec versions change as delta proposals archived into a ledger, Archcore versions typed documents beside plans and decision records and checks the branch against them.
GitHub Spec Kit: Spec Kit scaffolds per-change conventions for any agent, Archcore builds standing per-project context plus a review gate, so they compose more than they compete.
AGENTS.md: the rules file is the convention Archcore imports and extends with typed, linked, review-enforced documents.

Bottom line
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Recommended for multi-agent teams that want decisions and specs enforced at review time and that accept a young, unvalidated steward. Not for anyone who needs a proven adoption record, and not for solo prototype work where no document package would be produced at all. The disagreeable claim I will defend: naming the guilty side (code-wrong or spec-wrong) is the convergence answer this category has been missing, because every other tool hands you findings and hopes you adjudicate, which is exactly where review fatigue eats the gate.

Changes
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2026-10-21 - Created from the skills worker’s cross-category flag, resolving archcore-ai/archcore into this category as the typed-document context layer with the two-sided review verdict.

References
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https://github.com/archcore-ai/archcore - repository: counts, dates, license, the four-command README (71 stars as of 2026-10-21)
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/archcore-ai/archcore/main/README.md - the plan/document/review workflow, the document tree, install surfaces, and the change-to-package table
https://archcore.ai/ - the project site: positioning, install script, integrations list, and the code-wrong/spec-wrong framing
https://docs.archcore.ai/guides/commands/ - the command reference: typed documents, plugin hosts, MCP access, CLI split
https://archcore.ai/how-to-use/ - the MCP-plus-hooks connection model and the CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md import path
https://api.github.com/repos/archcore-ai/archcore/releases - the release train through v0.13.1 (2026-10-16)
https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=archcore&hitsPerPage=5 - the footprint check: no thread about the product, only unrelated ARM hits

decision-records on tomrochette.com

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decision-records on tomrochette.com

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