Thanks for the critique and feedback!
Firstly: The Golden Hammer soulmeld can undermine all of the item creation feats, by itself it is oddly balanced against the pathfinder item creation rules to which I initially applauded (since the shape soulmeld feat seemed to be nixed from the update).
Shape Soulmeld actually never
got an update, because it didn't really need one as-is. You'll notice that a few other feats exist in MoI which never got updated, like Soultouched Spellcasting; this was intentional. Expanded Meldshaping was intended to be used for serious meldshapers, and especially meldshapers who research their own soulmelds; Shape Soulmeld is more of a dabbler's feat (though the Soulborn can use it to get a critical soulmeld at 1st level, also).
But the problem of combining Golden Hammer with Radiant Incarnate (or Spirit Guide, or most to the point Patternmelder since that's actually a Foundationist that gets the meld without spending a feat) had never occurred to me before! That is indeed a serious issue. Thanks for pointing it out.
The simplest fix, here, I think, is to reword the Golden Hammer so that it becomes clear that the ability to meet feat prerequisites applies to the
wearer's own meldshaper level, rather than the meldshaper level of the soulmeld; this would mean that if you give a Golden Hammer to a character who isn't a meldshaper, they have no meldshaper level so that Item Creation feat is useless to them because they don't meet the prereqs.
Alternatively, maybe it is just Too Damned Good to allow access to all the feats, and should be limited to a selection like Arms & Armor, Wondrous Item, and Forge Ring. Or perhaps the meld substitutes meldshaper level for caster/manifester level and just grants you the ability to actually
take the Item Creation feats, like it was giving you Master Craftsman and X Craft ranks (where X = your meldshaper level).
Note that the massive skill bonus you achieved is not actually very difficult to get with meldshapers- meldshapers actually make
spectacular skill monkeys if properly configured and played. +20 for one specific skill at level 5 is a lot, yes, but believe it or not I've seen higher bonuses.
...or make it give a craft feat depending on the chakra it's bound to.
This is another potential solution, but makes the meld versatile in an entirely different way- the number of Chakras you can use it with. Still, the point is well taken.
Secondly: The class seems to lack aggressiveness. Most of the class abilities are defensive in nature and most of the soulmelds for the class are as well. Which was ok for my psychotic party but it can feel like one wrong soulmeld can eliminate the ability to contribute in combat.
Maybe switching out the incarnum radiance feature instead of the rapid meldshaping for the infused soulmeld features and whatnot instead, or just changing the class to an average attack progression.
Incarnate in general is not a super-aggressive class, actually, and Radiant is intentionally even less so. It was designed to fill more of a "party buffer" role than anything else- that's what the Infused Soulmeld class feature is designed to do in the first place.
Your suggestion about average attack progression has been suggested for the Incarnate before, though, and perhaps should in fact be done- Incarnate is, after all, patterned after the Cleric in that it's the "Cleric" of meldshapers to the Totemist "Druid" and the Soulborn "Paladin," and the Cleric has average attack progression- so why not the Incarnate too? It's clear that the original WotC designers wanted Incarnate to be a sort of stand-in for both Cleric and Wizard, with regards to meldshaping, but the actual selection of soulmelds is all Cleric really- hardly anything Wizard-worthy is there to be seen. That was why I had to come up with so many new ones for the Foundationist.
If you can get your GM to change the attack progression (or if you are the GM and want to change it), I say go for it.