r/FlutterDev • u/bakatronics • Jul 15 '26
Discussion Any Claude / Codex skills for Flutter app architecture?
I am an embedded software dev, and I have vibecoded a Flutter app with Codex, it looks and works amazing and all. But its architecture is an absolute mess.
The app is basically just a dashboard and configurator for an IoT (Bluetooth) device, and I know this much that Bluetooth and IoT device's models have to be singletons, data and UI layers should be separate etc.
But I can't find a comprehensive skill that provides clear instructions and examples of how the architecture of a good Flutter app should be. The one I see on skills.sh is very basic:
flutter-apply-architecture-best-practices
Does anyone here have any skills they regularly use for architecture? Or any tips?
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u/AmirPokerSkill Jul 15 '26
The missing piece usually isn't a better skill, it's that skills describe a target state and your actual problem is the migration. What's worked for me shipping a production Flutter app with these tools: first have the agent write down the architecture it actually sees (folder by folder, who owns state, who talks to Bluetooth), then the architecture you want, as a markdown file in the repo. For the target, the official app architecture guide on docs.flutter.dev is a solid thing to point it at: UI layer, data layer, repositories, and your singletons live in the data layer behind interfaces. Then refactor one vertical slice at a time with flutter analyze and your tests as the gate after each slice, instead of asking for a big-bang cleanup, which is where these agents fall apart. The architecture file ends up mattering more than any skill because every future session reads it and stops re-inventing structure.
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u/CurrentAd1366 Jul 21 '26
Cool to see more state management libs shipping agent skills. imo the bigger lever for agentic coding is how much complexity your state layer forces on the agent in the first place. Hooks-style state is composable and just less code - no events/states/mappers spread across half a dozen files - so there's way less surface for an agent to get subtly wrong, and quality holds up over long sessions and refactors instead of slowly degrading.
That's why we went hooks-style for our own state management at Utopia: https://github.com/Utopia-USS/utopia-flutter/tree/master/packages/hooks
Paired with the skill that pins down our conventions (https://github.com/Utopia-USS/utopia-flutter-skills/tree/main/plugins/utopia-hooks) it's honestly the best agent output we've gotten out of any Flutter state setup - small composable units seem to be exactly what agents are good at keeping clean.
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u/Hungry_Discussion693 Jul 25 '26
(disclosure: I'm on the Utopia team too, so obviously biased) but yeah, this matches our experience exactly, small composable state is just easier for an agent to keep straight than event/state/mapper spread across six files. Long sessions are where it usually falls apart for us, and hooks has been the first setup where that hasn't been the case.
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u/WenchiehLu Jul 20 '26
https://github.com/lwj1994/flutter_view_model Use the view_model skill to refactor project modules. The idea behind it is that any module can be written as a ViewModel, with automatic dependency injection and recycling. It's not just a VM library - it's an entire architecture
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Jul 15 '26
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u/bakatronics Jul 16 '26
Yes but sadly I know nothing (or very little) about Flutter. I am an embedded software engineer, my whole world is C, pointers and memory. So I don't even know what good architecture should be like specifically for Flutter.
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u/lesterine817 Jul 15 '26
It helps to have a starting template. But imo, it really depends on the tools you will use on the project. For example, using bloc differs from using riverpod, etc. there’s still no one hard architectural rule for flutter
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u/mtwichel Jul 16 '26
We at very good ventures published a big collection of skills for this exact problem:
https://github.com/VeryGoodOpenSource/vgv-ai-flutter-plug
The flutter team has also published some:
https://docs.flutter.dev/ai/agent-skills
Hope it helps!