Skills anthropics knowledge-work-plugins
system-design
- Use it when:
- You ask how to architect a system or service, or need help with API design, data modeling or service boundaries.
- It does:
- Works through five stages: requirements, high-level design, deep dive, scale and reliability, then trade-offs.
- You get:
- A structured design document with ASCII or described diagrams, stated assumptions, trade-offs, and what to revisit as the system grows.
- Unlike full design methods:
- This one is a one-page checklist of what to cover, with no examples or templates.
- Part of:
- The engineering plugin of Anthropic's knowledge-work plugins.
TL;DR
A short framework the agent follows for design questions. It starts from requirements: what the system does, its scale, latency, availability and cost targets, and constraints such as team size, timeline and existing stack. The high-level design covers a component diagram, data flow, API contracts and storage choices. The deep dive covers the data model, endpoints in REST, GraphQL or gRPC, caching, queues and events, and error handling with retries. Scale and reliability cover load estimates, horizontal or vertical scaling, failover and redundancy, and monitoring. Every decision's trade-offs are made explicit, weighing complexity, cost, team familiarity, time to market and maintainability. The result is a design document with its assumptions spelled out and a note of what to revisit as the system grows.
Summarizes the skill at ab4cb1c.
npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill system-design skills.sh pageSource on GitHubAll skills from anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
- Total Downloads
- 7,700 on skills.sh, Nov 9, 2026
- Repo stars
- 35,234 anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
- First seen
- Feb 24, 2026 on skills.sh
Weekly values
| Week to | Installs |
|---|---|
| Sep 21 | 123 |
| Sep 28 | 116 |
| Oct 5 | 97 |
| Oct 12 | 119 |
| Oct 19 | 104 |
| Oct 26 | 133 |
| Nov 2 | 110 |
| Nov 9 | 115 |
| Category |
Make the agent question you and write the plan down before it writes code. Everything for building software: planning, coding, debugging, design, frameworks, cloud, agents and skills. |
|---|---|
| Type |
A multi-step process the agent follows: interview, debug, run a TDD loop, review. |
| Effect |
Adds no side effects of its own. It shapes how the agent thinks, writes or reviews. Guidelines and routers are always effect:none, even when the task they support edits code. |
| Needs |
Instructions only. Works in any agent that supports skills. |
| Publisher |
A verified publisher on skills.sh, or the company or maintainer behind the product the skill operates. |
| Topics |
SKILL.md
From anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins at ab4cb1c. Checked daily, last changed Nov 6, 2026.
Frontmatter
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.