The architecture-first approach: A standard for AI-assisted coding

We’ve all seen it happen. You open Claude or ChatGPT, you type a prompt like “Build me a user management system,” and you watch the code pour out. It feels incredible. But then, the “infinite rewrite loop” begins.

On Monday, the AI generates a REST API. On Tuesday, you ask for a new feature, and it refactors everything to GraphQL. On Wednesday, another prompt triggers a shift to server-side rendering. By Friday, you have a codebase that looks like it was built by four different teams who hate each other.

We call this “Vibe coding”, programming based on how the AI “feels” in that specific context window, rather than on engineering principles.

At Ascendro, we learned the hard way that AI is an incredible builder, but a terrible architect. To fix this, we developed a methodology we call the Architecture-first approach. It’s the difference between building a house and piling up bricks.

Download our free guide on “How to Efficiently Use AI in Software Development” to check out the full framework and templates.

The house analogy: Why AI needs a blueprint

In software development, your architecture is the foundation. It includes:

Your Database schema
Your Authentication strategy
Your API style

If you let AI hallucinate these decisions on the fly, you are building on quicksand.

The solution: The “Architecture lock file”

This is the core tool in our methodology. Before we write a single line of feature code, we create an architecture lock file. It’s a concise, rigid constitution for the project that explicitly tells the AI what it is forbidden from changing.

Here is a simplified example of what ours looks like:

IMMUTABLE ARCHITECTURE DECISIONS

Authentication: Must use Keycloak. AI may NOT implement custom auth logic.
Database: PostgreSQL via Prisma. Schema changes require human review.
API Style: RESTful with Fastify. No GraphQL allowed.
Styling: Tailwind CSS only. No CSS-in-JS.

When you paste this context at the start of a session, the AI stops trying to be “creative” with your infrastructure. Instead of “building a user system” (which could go a thousand ways), it focuses on “implementing user CRUD operations using the existing Prisma schema and Fastify routes.”

The difference in output quality is night and day. The code becomes consistent, boring, and reliable.

We included our actual Architecture Lock File template in the appendix of our free eBook.

The 80/20 rule of AI development

Our philosophy is simple: 20% of your codebase must be locked down by humans. This includes your architecture, your security and your critical business rules.

The other 80% is where AI should run wild. This is the boilerplate, the UI components, the data transformations, the stuff that usually burns developer hours.

When you get this balance right, you move with purpose. You stop fighting the tool and start directing it.

If you are tired of debugging AI-generated chaos, it’s time to change your process.

We have documented the entire Architecture-First framework, including: