System Design

anthropics/knowledge-work-pluginsOfficial

This walks you through system design decisions with a structured framework covering requirements, high-level architecture, deep dives into data models and APIs, and scaling considerations. Trigger it when you're sketching out a new service, deciding between REST and GraphQL, or figuring out caching strategies. It pushes you to make trade-offs explicit rather than leaving them implied, which is honestly the most useful part. You'll get ASCII diagrams and design documents that call out assumptions and what to revisit as you scale. Good for both greenfield projects and when you need to articulate why you're choosing one approach over another to your team.

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skills.sh installs: 7.7K
GitHub stars: 35.3K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill system-design --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

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.

SKILL.md on GitHub