Agent skill · product strategy · anthropics
system-design
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.
Why this skill is useful
Provides structured methodologies for system design that include specific architectural patterns and trade-off analysis not commonly known to AI.
What it needs
About 1k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 23,345 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
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.
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills anthropics/system-design