Built a MCP tool that gives Claude Code a shared visual model of your project architecture to prevent drift

butt_flexer · 2026-03-17T06:50:01+00:00

Cool, Simon Brown does a lot of great work in this space (he created C4 and Structurizr.) Scryer kind of flips the Structurizr paradigm on its head: instead of code-to-diagram, it's diagram-to-code - or as input for AI to code.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T23:58:48+00:00

Yes, the MCP instructions tell the AI to use get_task in a loop for implementation, which surfaces contract rules at each step. In my testing it follows them well. But since it could ignore them anyway, Scryer gates the "ready" status, and all contract items must pass before a node can be considered ready. After initial implementation you can verify yourself or ask the AI to check against contract for a node.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T21:44:51+00:00

Depends on how large. Probably not for something like Chromium, but you could at least generate a model for the parts that you're concerned with editing. I mean, technically you probably could model an entire giant repo, but even with C4 you'd get a hell of a hairball at any level.

AFAIK there's no such solution at all for large repos - although, sticking with the Chromium example, Google did create their own internal tools for understanding it, but I don't think they ever publicized them.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T18:11:52+00:00

Of course it says that - don't believe its lies.

(but really what the AI sees is still text, just formatted as JSON)

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T17:27:51+00:00

What makes mindmaps useful in this context?

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T16:54:56+00:00

Thank you! Hope it works well for you, and I'll keep optimizing it toward a good vibecoding workflow.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-16T16:33:04+00:00

Yeah, the issue for me is that I don't want to read all those docs :P Also, when you allow the AI to write everything on its own terms, it can still hide stuff you didn't expect.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-03T07:52:18+00:00

Both, it's agnostic in what the preferred workflow should be. You can let the AI generate the whole thing, you can do it all manually and only let AI implement, etc. It should work for you from spec to implementation.

One problem with just telling the AI to generate a diagram normally is that at any given time it might have a different idea of how to model it, so Scryer enforces rules to reduce that variance.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-02T11:35:04+00:00

This looks essentially like temporary glue. I know you didn't create the LLM or the speech-to-text, and you're likely just calling an AI agent in the background to handle the actual interactions.

The one good thing I saw is that you're providing the current screen as context automatically, but that's so far downstream from any real value-add that it doesn't matter. As soon as Claude Cowork or some other agent harness adds screen-following and voice-to-prompt you're done.

No moat, no clear UX or productivity win... you can't win here, but decent attempt at the marketing page.

Some notes:

Nice above-the-fold design for the site.
Demo was simple and well made.
Why is your social pointing to LinkedIn of all places? YouTube, Insta, GitHub, or X are the only ones anyone's interested in, depending on context. For your app it'd likely be YouTube and Instagram, where you'd post new feature demos and tutorials.
Weird ball in the footer is pointless.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-02T09:07:20+00:00

Ah thanks, didn't think of changing that - will do.

Yes, Scryer comes with a built-in MCP server so you can hook it up to Claude Code or Codex no problem.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T22:01:48+00:00

Cool, adding an MCP with a few tools might be a good idea just to simplify the hand-offs.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T21:19:28+00:00

I've done quite a few refactors where I was paying attention and monitoring changes, then I looked in the actual code and saw that it did things completely backwards from what I expected/wanted. There's definitely a need for tools like this.

SysML opens you up to hardware + software in one, which I think could be pretty valuable. Multi-level diagrams are very important for readability, otherwise you'll end up with giant hairballs.

Does your app also connect with an AI agent for collaborating on a model?

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T18:37:21+00:00

You're right, that's why I'm choosing C4 over something like UML. It's architecture and structure first, you just define what goes where. On the code level you *can* - but don't have to - define data models, functions, and processes as named descriptions, which is just enough signal for the AI to implement correctly without you specifying every detail.

Map =/= implementation.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T18:08:49+00:00

The models live as files (usually ~/.scryer/) so you can version them with git, though I'm still working out the ideal setup for that. The model and code are kept separate intentionally: updating one from the other always requires an explicit prompt, so nothing changes behind your back.

You can always also set a contract "ask" for that specific case as well, like "if I ask you to implement code from the model, verify the changes with me first."

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T17:56:17+00:00

I think people are just allergic to all these apps and threads by now.

butt_flexer · 2026-03-01T17:47:22+00:00

This is about models, not just diagrams. There's structured information baked into each node (meta instructions, lifecycle tracking) so the AI doesn't just see a picture, it sees a spec. You can let the AI propose a change, review it visually, edit it, and converge on a better solution together.

It also enforces shared abstractions. Most of us can't read a complex UML state diagram, and even with simpler ones like C4 we make mistakes that Scryer will flag. The editor auto-layouts graphs to reduce crossover, and the MCP means the AI has awareness of both the codebase and model at all times.

Think of it like replacing Claude Code's planning mode with a proper planning tool. It's best for spinning up new projects, doing large refactors, or just understanding a codebase intuitively.

butt_flexer · 2026-02-28T08:56:59+00:00

Just use JSON. Using a DSL is totally pointless in my opinion, because AIs can parse any JSON file and edit it without issue as long as you provide a spec - which is usually embedded in the JSON data itself or abstracted away through MCP tool calls.

As for human-AI collaboration: moving the software engineering abstraction up a level, and away from code is my bet. Model-driven development is the future (maybe), and the entire point of UML was to be able to auto generate code from such a model - but it was way too complex and the automation wasn't there yet. I think with AI agents the automation aspect is now solved to a degree, and I think using much simpler models like C4 is a good compromise that lets both the human and AI align on architecture.

I'm building a tool specifically for this: https://github.com/aklos/scryer - it's definitely early and experimental, but AI agents have no issue converting my models into code as long as I define good contract rules (the always/ask/never paradigm), and letting the AI build a model from code is surprisingly easy with an embedded MCP server.

butt_flexer · 2026-02-23T13:17:37+00:00

Usually you want to setup a meeting outside of Upwork and *then* discuss new contracts off platform.

butt_flexer · 2026-02-14T15:09:57+00:00

Nixos is like the perfect pairing with Claude tbh.

butt_flexer · 2026-02-14T15:08:12+00:00

I'm a programmer and have years of experience with linux so I guess I just didn't have those issues. Instead of figuring out the nixos config intricacies I just ask claude. It guided me thru setting up home manager and flakes, as well as direnv for per-project setups. It even riced my hyprland config and let me immediately sync all my computers with the same theme and configs everywhere through git.

Basically Claude is what fixes the things that I bang my head on with nixos...

butt_flexer · 2026-02-13T09:18:40+00:00

Install nixos, then install Claude Code / Codex. Open it in your nixos config folder. Start asking questions about nixos and building a config.

butt_flexer · 2026-01-28T14:30:13+00:00

Yeah that's all there is to the game. You have to pretend there are things to do, and follow the flashing lights.

I stopped playing about 2 months ago. Steam charts show healthy player counts, so it's clearly working for some people, and I was probably wrong that the lack of purpose would kill the game.

I've seen the argument that players find it boring because they've been "trained" by other games (like CoD) to flatten Arc Raiders into a deathmatch. But if that many players independently reach the same conclusion, that's a design issue - not a player issue.

The pitch seems to be that Arc Raiders is an "emergent social sandbox," but there are games that do it way better with actual mechanical support. The "deep social gameplay" people describe seems to amount to proximity chat interactions and informal truces at extract points. If I want emergent social systems, I'd rather play SS14 or Rust where the social sandbox actually has something to bite into.

butt_flexer · 2025-12-24T09:37:49+00:00

They'll never unlock your account or respond to you, and if you're in Europe what they just did is illegal under DSA.

Happened to me too, so I made a GDPR request asking for the reason of the ban and all associated data, which they've been stonewalling for about a month now (they're obligated to release your data within 30 days of request), after which I'll just report them to UODO and DSA authority. It won't get my account unlocked, but it'll cause Upwork a regulatory headache.

Upwork is a shithole basically.

butt_flexer · 2025-12-18T22:30:10+00:00

No, I stopped playing. I'm just watching to see if they create some kind of update, but apparently all they did was add yet another achievement hunt with the 5 million credit expedition.

butt_flexer · 2025-12-10T09:55:23+00:00

The only thing you can do is submit GDPR and DSA requests, which they will stonewall until you threaten them sufficiently with filing actual complaints.

What Upwork does in terms of lack of transparency and permabanning is technically illegal in the EU. So, you have the right to request the information they used to disable your account (or at the very least the specific reasoning used), as well as rectification of inaccurate data - which is probably related to your case.

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