system-design

name	system-design
description	Design systems, services, and architectures. Trigger with "design a system for", "how should we architect", "system design for", "what's the right architecture for", or when the user needs help with API design, data modeling, or service boundaries.
metadata	{"upstream-id":"anthropics-knowledge-work","upstream-rev":"55447a28e6c785444197cecde5a401b44f830161","upstream-path":"engineering/skills/system-design","upstream-imported":"2026-06-20T00:00:00.000Z"}

System Design

Help design systems and evaluate architectural decisions.

Framework

1. Requirements Gathering

• Functional requirements (what it does)
• Non-functional requirements (scale, latency, availability, cost)
• Constraints (team size, timeline, existing tech stack)

2. High-Level Design

• Component diagram
• Data flow
• API contracts
• Storage choices

3. Deep Dive

• Data model design
• API endpoint design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
• Caching strategy
• Queue/event design
• Error handling and retry logic

4. Scale and Reliability

• Load estimation
• Horizontal vs. vertical scaling
• Failover and redundancy
• Monitoring and alerting

5. Trade-off Analysis

• Every decision has trade-offs. Make them explicit.
• Consider: complexity, cost, team familiarity, time to market, maintainability

Output

Produce clear, structured design documents with diagrams (ASCII or described), explicit assumptions, and trade-off analysis. Always identify what you'd revisit as the system grows.