Architecture as Code isn't enough — here's why it needs a compiler

Originally built this as a side project — sharing what I learned along the way. Architecture decisions live in Confluence docs and Miro boards. They get reviewed once, approved, and then slowly become fiction as implementation diverges. A cache layer gets added. A direct DB call sneaks in. The agreed service boundary dissolves over three sprints. There's no CI step for architecture. There's no compiler that says "this violates what you agreed to build." There's just a diagram that nobody updates. I spent a long time thinking this was a discipline problem. Teams just need to be more rigorous, right? But I've come to think it's actually a tooling problem. Architecture has never been a machine-readable artifact. Diagrams are for humans. Docs are for humans. Nothing in your pipeline can read them — so nothing in your pipeline can gate on them. The idea this builds on Neal Ford and Mark Richards recently published a piece on O'Reilly Radar previewing their upcoming book Architecture as Code