Back to Articles ArcKit v6.20.0 hero: a supplier’s bid goes to a read-only reader and stops at a wall, and only short claims cross it to the scoring.
7 November 2026

ArcKit v6.20.0 is out, and the main change is for anyone scoring suppliers: a bid no longer reaches the part of ArcKit that scores it. Also new are an arc42 overlay from Chris McKelt, and NORA and GEMMA for Dutch government from @trednets.

Mark Craddock · medium.com/arckit

A bid can't mark its own homework

A supplier wants a high score, and hiding an instruction in a proposal is a cheap way to try for one. So I've split reading a bid from scoring it.

In Claude Code, a read-only reader now opens one supplier's documents at a time and returns short claims against each criterion. /arckit:evaluate and /arckit:score work from those claims and never see the bid.

  • No claim, no marks. A criterion the bid doesn't address scores 0. That's arithmetic, not opinion.
  • Mandatory qualifications need evidence. One with no claim fails, and /arckit:score compare won't recommend that vendor.
  • Every score traces to its source. The claims are saved with their file and location.
  • A bid that can't be read stays unscored. You're told which file and why. It never gets a 0.
  • Planted text gets reported, not followed. The finding says where it is, not what it says.

It isn't bulletproof. Scoring is still a judgement on what a supplier claims, so a bid that fools the reader into a false claim can still move a score. I'd check the claims behind any close result. The other assistants can't run a separate reader, so they still read bids in one place.

/arckit:hld-review, /arckit:dld-review, /arckit:gcloud-search and /arckit:gcloud-clarify get a lighter version. They treat what a supplier wrote as claims and list anything aimed at the reviewer, but that's an instruction to the model, not a separation, so it's weaker.

Checks that stop when they can't run

ArcKit checks your artefacts as they're written: secrets, filenames, scores, Wardley maps, backlog totals. If a check hung or crashed, Claude Code carried on without it, which isn't good enough for a governance tool.

Now, writing an ArcKit artefact or reading a bid stops if its check can't run, and the error says why. Your other repositories aren't affected.

arc42 from what you already have

Chris McKelt has contributed an arckit-arc42 overlay. /arckit-arc42:arc42 writes all 12 sections of an arc42 description from your existing requirements, decisions, diagrams and risk register, citing each source. A section nothing covers is marked as not yet documented, with the command that would fill it.

Four more commands cover quality scenarios, crosscutting concepts, a technical debt register and a handover pack for Spec Kit. Delivery evidence then comes back: /arckit:traceability shows what's been delivered against each requirement, and /arckit:health flags a description when the artefacts behind it have moved on.

NORA and GEMMA for Dutch government

@trednets has added two commands to the Netherlands overlay. /arckit-nl:nl-nora assesses a Dutch government service against the NORA principles, adding the GEMMA principles for a gemeente. /arckit-nl:nl-gemma maps a gemeente's application landscape onto GEMMA's reference components, showing coverage, overlap and gaps.

ArcKit ships no NORA or GEMMA text. The commands build a local copy from the official sources on your machine.

Before you update

  • Update Claude Code. ArcKit now needs v2.1.295 or later.
  • Check Node.js is installed. Writing ArcKit artefacts and reading bids now need it on your PATH.
  • Export Word bids to PDF. The reader can't open Word documents.
  • Move any existing evaluations. They now sit in vendors/_evaluations/<vendor>/. Before re-scoring a vendor, move its evaluation.md and notes.md there. Scoring stops for a vendor whose folder still holds them, because they could equally have come with the bid.

Thank you

Thanks to Chris McKelt, @chrismckelt, for arc42, the Spec Kit handover and getting Paperclip and Codex projects the files their commands need. Thanks to @trednets for NORA and GEMMA, and @umag for reviewing them. And thanks to Chris Nesbitt-Smith, @chrisns, for making ArcKit's evaluations prove a command really loaded.

Get it

# Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add tractorjuice/arckit-claude
claude plugin install arckit

# the optional overlays
claude plugin install arckit arckit-arc42
claude plugin install arckit arckit-nl

Already using ArcKit? Run claude plugin update arckit@arckit-claude.

ArcKit is MIT licensed and maintained at github.com/tractorjuice/arc-kit. The full list of changes is in the 6.20.0 release notes.

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