Compose

Contents

• Overview
• The Inventory
  • Browsing the inventory
• Running a Compose Job
  • Web app
  • CLI
• Guiding the Output
  • Description, environment, and technology
  • User ethos
• Output

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Overview

Compose takes items from the composition inventory — algorithms, patterns, abstractions, and other portable ideas extracted from one or more decomposed projects — and synthesises a new architectural design from them. The AI validates the design for correctness, security, and performance, and produces hardened output in Markdown.

Unlike Transmute, Compose lets you cherry-pick ideas from multiple projects and combine them however you like.

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The Inventory

The composition inventory is populated automatically when a decomposition reaches Phase 6. It is a flat catalogue of portable ideas extracted from codebases, organised into seven categories:

Category	What it captures
Algorithm	Name, purpose, inputs/outputs, time/space complexity, pseudocode, test cases, security analysis
Design Pattern	Pattern name, where applied, problem solved, deviations from canonical form
Invariant	The condition, when it must hold, what breaks if violated
Data Transformation	Input shape, output shape, transformation logic, where it occurs
Domain Vocabulary	Term, definition as used in this system, why it matters
Architectural Primitive	The smallest indivisible building block; what it is, what is built on top of it
Key Abstraction	What it hides, what it exposes, what breaks if it leaks

Browsing the inventory

Web app — Open the Inventory screen to search, filter by category or project, expand items, and add them to the compose basket.

CLI:

otx inventory                              # list all items
otx inventory --category Algorithm         # filter by category
otx inventory --project my-project        # filter by project
otx inventory --search "retry"            # search by name/summary
otx inventory --search "retry" --verbose  # show full markdown

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Running a Compose Job

Web app

1. On the Inventory screen, click Add to basket on the items you want.
2. Navigate to the Compose screen.
3. Review the basket — remove items or toggle grouping by category.
4. Expand Prompt Preview to see the exact prompt that will be sent to the AI.
5. Optionally fill in the target Description, Environment, and Technology fields.
6. Choose a backend and click Run Compose.

CLI

# Compose from specific items (by name or GUID)
otx compose --output my-new-system \
  --items "Token Bucket Rate Limiter,Circuit Breaker Pattern" \
  --description "A resilient API gateway" \
  --technology "Go, gRPC" \
  --environment "Kubernetes"

# Include all items from a category
otx compose --output algo-showcase --category Algorithm

# Include all items from a project
otx compose --output new-system --project trading-engine

# Mix selection methods
otx compose --output hybrid \
  --project trading-engine \
  --category Algorithm \
  --items "some-extra-guid"

At least one of --items, --category, or --project is required.

See CLI: compose for the full option reference.

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Guiding the Output

Description, environment, and technology

These three fields shape what the AI designs:

• Description — what the target system should be and do
• Environment — where it runs (cloud, browser, embedded, mobile, etc.)
• Technology — the tech stack, language, or framework to target

otx compose --output payment-service \
  --project ecommerce-platform \
  --description "A payment processing microservice with idempotent retries" \
  --environment "AWS Lambda, managed by Terraform" \
  --technology "TypeScript, Node.js, DynamoDB"

User ethos

The user ethos is a block of text describing your personal coding standards — naming conventions, error handling philosophy, testing requirements, security baselines, and anything else the AI should treat as a top-level authoritative instruction.

Set it once to apply it to every future Compose run:

otx settings --user-ethos "All code must be idiomatic Go. Errors are wrapped with fmt.Errorf \
  and %w. All exported functions have godoc comments. No global state."

Override it for a single run:

otx compose --output my-design --items "..." \
  --ethos "All public APIs must have OpenAPI annotations. Errors use RFC 7807."

The web app applies the ethos stored in Settings automatically.

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Output

Results are saved to Output/Composition/<name>/compose-output.md relative to the working directory.

From there, you can feed the output into the Implement pipeline to generate working code.