Agent skill · vasilyu1983
foundations-distributed-systems
Distributed-systems primitives for CAP/PACELC, FLP, Paxos, Raft, clocks, CRDTs, leases, quorums, and broadcast protocols. Use when designing coordination.
What it needs
About 11k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Distributed Systems Foundations 11 canonical primitives for distributed systems theory. Each primitive resolves a specific correctness or availability failure. Primitives are domain-agnostic: the same quorum math that governs database replication governs agent-state synchronisation; the same fencing tokens that prevent split-brain in a storage cluster prevent double-writes in a payment processor. When to Apply Apply distributed-systems primitives when: 2+ nodes participate in a write or shared state (replication, consensus) Network partitions are possible and must be tolerated (CAP/PACELC tradeoff) Idempotency, exactly-once, or fencing tokens are needed for safety Consistency level is being chosen (linearizable / sequential / causal / eventual) Multi-region or multi-AZ deployment with failover/quorum requirements Skip and use simpler alternatives when: Single-node system, single writer — none of these primitives apply Question is about throughput/latency under load — use foundations-queueing-theory Question is about availability/SLO budget — use foundations-reliability-theory "We don't have a partition problem" — verify by looking at past incidents; if true, simpler replication patterns suffice Eventual-consistency is acceptable AND ordering doesn't matter — use last-writer-wins or CRDTs without consensus Strong-consistency demand is a vague preference, not a stated business invariant — challenge it; the cost is high Contents Quick Reference Primitive Index Formal Supporting Theory Misuse Boundaries Decision Checklist Anti-Patterns Expert Diagnosis: Reading Symptoms Consistency Level by Product Feature The Retry/Timeout/Idempotency Triad Most Outages Are Operational, Not Algorithmic Testing: Deterministic Simulation and Fault Injection Composition Recipes Workflow ASCII Flow Related Skills Fact-Checking --- Quick Reference # Primitive When to Reach For It --- ----------- ---------------------- 1 CAP / PACELC Choosing a replication topology or data store trade-off 2 …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills vasilyu1983/foundations-distributed-systems