Genesis

Genesis is an open-source skill by Daniel Meppiel that ports the software architect's role to agentic systems. You summon it in an AI coding agent with /genesis and a description of what you want designed. It returns a named pattern, an execution diagram, an acceptance test, and a written plan before any file is touched. The latest listed release is v0.3.0.

What It Is

Genesis is an architectural layer for systems built from Markdown that steers an LLM: instruction files, skills, agent personas, rules, and triggers. It applies decomposition, contracts, and cross-cutting concerns to workflows where an LLM is the runtime. It targets problems such as monolithic instruction files, copy-paste duplication across primitives, and behavioral drift over long sessions.

How the Architect's Loop Works

The skill follows an eight-step process: state the goal, name the primitives, pick a pattern, check whether an existing module can be composed, draw a Mermaid UML diagram, define acceptance, persist a plan, then implement and reload the plan on each meaningful turn. For a PR-review prompt, it proposes a file layout with a skill entrypoint, lens agents, an output-schema rule, assets, and a trigger file. It then justifies each piece against its pattern catalogue.

Primitives and Patterns

Genesis defines six harness-neutral primitives: persona scoping file, module entrypoint, scope-attached rule file, child-thread spawn, trigger orchestrator, and plan persistence. Its catalogue lists 23 design patterns, 9 architectural patterns, and 4 refactor patterns, mapped onto Gang-of-Four ideas. The Attention Anchor pattern re-injects goals and constraints to counter attention drift in long sessions. The repository includes five worked examples with considered-and-rejected alternatives.

Setup Path

Install with npx skills add danielmeppiel/genesis, or with apm install danielmeppiel/genesis if you use apm. The README lists adapters for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Cursor, OpenCode, and Codex, and says it works with 41+ more agents. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0.