Gold-standard structure and quality criteria for the technical solution proposals produced by the solution_designer agent and judged by the critic. Load this skill before writing or reviewing any _solution_design.md file. Works for any software project; AI/ML becomes the spine whenever the system has one (the common case). Single recommended architecture; no multiple options; no effort/time/cost estimates anywhere.
Gold-standard structure and quality criteria for the technical solution proposals produced by the solution_designer agent and judged by the critic. Load this skill before writing or reviewing any _solution_design.md file. Works for any software project; AI/ML becomes the spine whenever the system has one (the common case). Single recommended architecture; no multiple options; no effort/time/cost estimates anywhere.
Solution Design Document — Template & Quality Standard
Purpose
This skill is the single source of truth for the structure, depth, and quality bar of every solution design document in this pipeline. Both the writer (solution_designer) and the reviewer/critic load it — the writer as an authoring guide, the critic as a checklist. If the two ever disagree, this file wins.
The target is a publication-quality technical proposal in the mould of a real client-facing solution document: one committed architecture — with AI/ML at its core whenever the system has an AI/ML dimension — demonstrated through concrete scenarios and module tables, with figure placeholders where a diagram explains better than prose.
Three rules that override everything below
One architecture, not several. The document puts forward ONE design. Credible alternatives are dismissed in a single prose sentence where the decision is made — never laid out as options for the reader to weigh, and never as a per-aspect Pro/Con trade-off table.
No estimates of any kind. No money, no durations (days/weeks/months), no S/M/L/XL, no story points, no team sizes. Phases are defined by what they deliver and their exit criterion — never by how long or how much. The only permitted hedge is a single caveat on the infrastructure section.
No bold text anywhere in the document. Do not use **bold** markdown in the output. Bold formatting reads as AI-generated and undermines credibility. Use heading levels, tables, and plain prose instead. The only exception is code or command literals inside backticks.
Lists over inline enumerations. Whenever three or more items appear in sequence, use a bullet list — not a comma-separated run-on sentence. This applies inside prose paragraphs too: if a sentence would read "A, B, and C," break it into a three-item list instead.
AI/ML is the spine — when the system has one. This template fits any software project. When the system has an AI/ML dimension (the common case in this pipeline), it is the centre of gravity: models, data flows, training/feedback loops, and human-in-the-loop controls are first-class content, not an appendix. When a project genuinely has no AI/ML component, the AI-specific parts below become "if applicable" — do not manufacture ML to satisfy them; give the system's actual core engine the same depth instead. Sections explicitly marked (AI/ML systems) are conditional; everything else is mandatory for every project.
Mandatory Document Structure
Every _solution_design.md MUST contain these, in this order:
Do not add a complexity, effort, or estimate field. (Removed deliberately — see Rule 2.)
Section 1 — Solution Overview
1.1 Business Context
2–4 paragraphs: the business problem, why existing tools fall short, the regulatory/market backdrop, and one sentence stating plainly what the system is and what it deliberately is not. State the central architectural idea here. No marketing language.
Stakeholder Role Reference
A table covering every human actor and every external system:
#
Role
Type
System Role
Key Interests
Source
One row per actor/system from the requirements.
The Source column quotes the requirements verbatim where they speak to that actor's need — one short quote per row, in quotation marks.
1.2 Core Architecture
Name the central design (e.g. a layered authentication architecture, an event-driven pipeline, a closed-loop scoring system). A table laying out the main layers/components and what each establishes. State plainly why no single component is a single point of failure. Place the system-context / overview figure here.
1.3 Key Innovation / Integration
THE differentiator — the single technical bet that drives the rest of the design. This section is mandatory in some form for every project.
For an AI/ML system (the common case): a table plus a paragraph showing how ML outputs feed downstream decisions in real time — which model signal drives which consequence — with the closed loop made explicit: an anomalous/failed ML signal produces an automatic downstream effect. Mandatory even if the requirements mention ML only lightly.
For a non-AI system: name the one core technical bet (the consistency model, the event backbone, the integration contract, the data model — whatever it is) and show how it propagates through the system and what it buys. No ML framing forced.
Section 2 — Technology Stack
2.1 Architecture Pattern
Commit to ONE pattern. Open with the single-sentence dismissal of the main alternative ("a full microservices split front-loads distributed-systems overhead before the domain is stable; we therefore use a modular monolith with two extracted ML services"), then describe the chosen pattern and why it fits these specific NFRs and this domain. Include a figure placeholder.
Module / Component breakdown
One or two tables:
#
Module
Description
List every module of the system.
Explicitly mark the system's specialised / heavy-compute services and pin each to its optimal runtime — for an AI/ML system this is the model services (e.g. a Python GPU service for embeddings, a Python service for the scoring model) split from the core business runtime; for other systems it is whatever genuinely needs isolating (a streaming worker, a search/indexing service, a reporting engine).
Name concrete technologies for the core runtime, any ML model(s) and libraries (where the system uses them), datastore (and vector index if similarity search is needed), queue/async layer, object storage, and any specialised store the domain demands. Every choice traceable to a requirement or a verified research finding — with confirmed current version numbers, not remembered ones.
Section 3 — Delivery Phasing
A short intro paragraph describing the delivery arc, then a phase table:
Phase
Core Delivery
Modules
Phase Exit Criterion
No Effort/Duration/Cost column. Ever.
The exit criterion is a concrete, demonstrable capability ("a verified user can do X end-to-end and the result is independently verifiable"), not a milestone label.
The first phase is Phase 0 — Discovery & Architecture Validation: a pre-development validation phase that verifies every technical claim against the requirements/spec and produces a signed-off architecture before any code is written. List its deliverables in a table; its exit criterion is joint client + vendor sign-off.
Per-phase deep-dive (one ## section per functional phase)
Each functional phase section MUST contain, in order:
A 1-paragraph intro: what the phase completes and its exit state.
An end-to-end scenario walkthrough — a named, concrete narrative ("Gallery scenario", "Transaction scoring scenario") following one real flow through the modules, naming the actual libraries/models/algorithms invoked at each step. This is the most persuasive part of the document. The walkthrough is the only data-flow narrative — do NOT add a separate "Data-Flow Narrative" section or paragraph after the walkthrough.
A figure placeholder + caption for the phase data flow; a second one for the phase module architecture if warranted.
A module table (# | Module | Description) for everything delivered in the phase.
A far-out phase that depends on operational data not yet available (typically the ML-maturity phase) gets a short Design note flagging it as a directional blueprint to be re-planned at the prior phase's exit — without any date or cost.
AI/ML phase(s) — additional mandatory content (AI/ML systems only)
Applies only where the system has an AI/ML phase. Skip entirely for non-AI projects — its absence is then not a finding.
The model(s) and the exact decision logic (variables, weights, bands, thresholds) where the domain has them.
Training-data strategy — where labels come from, and the explicit rule that labels derive from human decisions, never from the model's own outputs (no feedback-loop contamination).
Human-in-the-loop — no ML suggestion alters a live decision without explicit human confirmation; advisory outputs stay advisory.
Model lifecycle — retraining triggers (event- or data-driven: accumulated labelled volume, detected drift, or a manual trigger — never a fixed calendar schedule), version history, shadow/parallel evaluation before promotion, automatic rollback on regression, explainability logging.
Fine-tuning / domain-adaptation plan if the corpus grows, and any RAG/assistant capability under evaluation, with its governance open questions (e.g. GDPR erasure vs. retention) stated honestly.
Section 4 — Non-Functional Requirements
A table:
Category
Requirement
Design Approach
One row per NFR from the requirements; quote the specific target value ("≤500ms p95", "99.5% uptime", "≤5s scoring end-to-end").
The Design Approach names the concrete mechanism that hits it (the framework, the index, the deployment topology, the encryption scheme) — backed by a benchmark you verified, not asserted.
Cover at minimum: API latency, the core processing/compute SLA (the ML inference SLA where the system has one), availability, scale, data retention, security, and the relevant regulation(s).
Section 5 — Infrastructure & Deployment
This section is mandatory for every project; only the deployment model changes.
Pick the deployment model from the requirements, not by default. It may be a named cloud vendor (AWS / Azure / GCP / …), multi-cloud, on-premises / self-hosted, sovereign/air-gapped, or hybrid. State which one and why in the first line. If the requirements name a vendor or mandate on-prem, design to that; if they are silent, choose one and justify it briefly.
Research-intensive — must not be written from memory. Confirm current product/service names for the chosen target (managed services for a cloud vendor; the self-hosted equivalents — e.g. Kubernetes, Postgres, Kafka, MinIO, Vault — for on-prem), the right compute families for the workload (GPU where the system runs ML inference), region/residency and data-sovereignty constraints, and the reference architecture the target platform publishes for this workload class.
A short overview paragraph: how traffic enters, where workloads run, how any heavy-compute tier is isolated (the GPU/ML tier where applicable), how state is stored, how secrets/keys are managed.
Open with a one-line caveat that the infrastructure design is a first-pass approximation to be refined during discovery. This is the only hedge permitted in the whole document — never hedge on functionality.
A figure placeholder + caption for the topology.
A platform / service reference table:
Category
Service / Component
Usage
Cover compute (incl. any GPU/ML node where applicable), storage, database (and vector index where similarity search is used), cache/queue, CDN or edge (where applicable), load balancing/ingress, networking, the full security stack (WAF/edge protection, KMS/HSM or self-hosted key management, secrets, IAM/RBAC), notifications, monitoring/tracing, and artifact/container registry. For a named cloud, name its managed services; for on-prem, name the self-hosted components that play each role. Every entry must be one you confirmed exists and fits.
Figures (ILLUSTRATION placeholders)
Wherever a diagram explains better than prose, insert a placeholder immediately followed by a caption:
<!-- ILLUSTRATION: <slug>
Description: one precise sentence — components, arrows, what flows where, what to emphasise.
Style: technical diagram, boxes and arrows, no gradients
-->
*Figure N. Caption describing the figure as if it already exists.*
Always an HTML comment, never visible text. The Description: must be specific enough for the Illustrator agent to draw it without reading the rest of the document.
Number figures sequentially across the whole document.
Minimum 1 (the Section 1.2 architecture overview is mandatory). No fixed upper cap — a serious proposal carries one figure per major flow and per phase architecture; use as many as genuinely earn their place. Do not pad, do not starve.
Quality Bar — For Writers (pre-submit checklist)
Exactly ONE architecture put forward — no options for the reader to choose between
Zero estimates anywhere (no money, time, S/M/L/XL, story points, team size)
Section 1 has 1.1 Business Context, the Stakeholder Role Reference table, 1.2 Core Architecture, 1.3 Key Innovation / Integration
Stakeholder table quotes the requirements (one short quote per relevant row)
Section 1.3 is concrete: for an AI/ML system the real-time model→downstream closed loop is explicit; for a non-AI system the single core technical bet and its propagation are explicit
Architecture Pattern is committed, with the alternative dismissed in one sentence
Module tables mark the specialised / heavy-compute services and pin their runtime (the ML services where applicable)
Phase table has Phase / Core Delivery / Modules / Exit Criterion — and NO effort column
Phase 0 Discovery present with deliverables table and sign-off exit criterion
Every functional phase has: scenario walkthrough + figure + module table (NO separate Data-Flow Narrative section)
(AI/ML systems) the AI/ML phase covers training-data strategy, human-in-the-loop, model lifecycle
NFR table addresses every NFR from requirements with a concrete mechanism
Infrastructure & Deployment section states the deployment model (cloud vendor / on-prem / hybrid) and has the discovery caveat, topology figure, and full platform/service reference table
Architecture overview figure present in Section 1.2; figures numbered sequentially
Every technology, version, service, and benchmark was confirmed by a search this session
Every requirement, NFR, and integration is addressed somewhere or deferred to a named phase
No marketing language ("cutting-edge", "revolutionary", "best-in-class", "robust" with nothing behind it)
Quality Bar — For Reviewers (Critic)
Dimension 1 — Structure
All sections present in correct order (Overview → Tech Stack → Delivery Phasing → NFR → Infrastructure)
YAML front-matter present with required fields, and NO effort/complexity field
At least 1 <!-- ILLUSTRATION: ... --> placeholder (the 1.2 overview)
Dimension 2 — Formatting
Stakeholder roles, module breakdowns, phase plan, NFRs, and infrastructure services each rendered as tables (not prose or bullets)
Section 1 is structured into subsections, not a flat prose block
Figure captions present beneath their placeholders, numbered sequentially
No **bold** markdown anywhere in the document body
No inline comma-separated enumerations of 3+ items — each such list rendered as bullets
Dimension 3 — Content Quality
ONE architecture only — flag any document that presents multiple options to choose between
ZERO estimates — flag any money, duration, S/M/L/XL, story-point, or team-size figure
Section 1.3 is concrete, not generic — for an AI system a real model→downstream link (not "we use ML"); for a non-AI system a real core-technical bet (not a vague slogan)
(AI/ML systems only) each AI/ML phase covers training data, human-in-the-loop, and model lifecycle
Architecture Pattern names and dismisses its main alternative in prose
Every NFR from requirements is addressed with a concrete mechanism
Every integration from requirements is addressed
Technologies, versions, and cloud services are specific and plausibly current (not obviously invented/stale)
Every functional phase has a scenario walkthrough
No marketing language
Severity Mapping
Dimension
Check failed
Severity
Content
Presents multiple options to choose between
HIGH
Content
Contains any time/cost/effort estimate
HIGH
Structure
Missing a top-level section
HIGH
Structure
Section 1 missing a required subsection
HIGH
Structure
Missing NFR table
HIGH
Structure
No ILLUSTRATION placeholder at all
HIGH
Content
NFR from requirements not addressed
HIGH
Content
Section 1.3 absent or generic (no real innovation/closed loop)
Bold (**...**) text used anywhere in the document body
MEDIUM
Formatting
Inline comma-separated enumeration of 3+ items instead of a bullet list
MEDIUM
Content
Technology/version/service looks invented or clearly stale
MEDIUM
Content
Integration from requirements not addressed
MEDIUM
Content
Marketing language
LOW
Verdict rules
APPROVED — zero HIGH findings and no more than 2 MEDIUM findings
REVISE — one or more HIGH findings, or 3+ MEDIUM findings
IGNORE in review
<!-- ILLUSTRATION: ... --> content is for the Illustrator agent. Do not flag a diagram as "missing" when the placeholder comment is present — the placeholder is the deliverable at this stage.
