# system-design

- type: skill
- industry: software-engineering
- roles: general
- source: https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/main/engineering/skills/system-design/SKILL.md
- license: Apache-2.0 (mirror-with-attribution)
- install: npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill system-design
- needs_credentials: false
- writes_external: false
- updated_at: 2026-10-15T10:15:30Z

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.

---

Mirrored from https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/main/engineering/skills/system-design/SKILL.md under Apache-2.0. The original is authoritative.

---
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.
---

# 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.