Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) distilled reference guide by Martin Kleppmann. MUST be loaded when: designing database schemas, choosing storage engines, implementing replication or partitioning, handling distributed transactions, building batch/stream processing pipelines, choosing consistency models, implementing consensus, designing data flow architectures, evaluating trade-offs between availability and consistency, encoding/serialization decisions, data modeling (relational vs document vs graph), building fault-tolerant systems, or any system design and architecture discussion involving data-intensive applications. Trigger on: database design, replication, partitioning, sharding, transactions, isolation levels, consistency, consensus, CAP theorem, batch processing, stream processing, MapReduce, Kafka, event sourcing, CDC, OLTP, OLAP, B-tree, LSM-tree, data warehouse, schema evolution, encoding formats, distributed systems, fault tolerance, leader election, quorum.
Mandatory coding discipline rules that prevent common AI coding anti-patterns. MUST be loaded for ALL code writing, editing, reviewing, bug fixing, and testing tasks. Trigger on: writing code, editing code, fixing bugs, writing tests, implementing features, refactoring, code review, creating functions, adding error handling, debugging. This skill enforces fail-fast principles, proper error propagation, meaningful tests, and disciplined debugging workflows. Always active when Claude writes or modifies code.