System Design

This walks solo developers through the gap between validated requirements and actual architecture, diagnosing six states from "no requirements clarity" to "design validated." It's opinionated about common traps: over-engineering for hypothetical futures, under-engineering critical paths, and building components in isolation without thinking through integration points. The walking skeleton concept is central here, pushing you to define the thinnest end-to-end path before building horizontally across layers. Worth using when you've finished requirements analysis but keep making architecture decisions by gut feel or defaulting to patterns without understanding the tradeoffs. The ADR and component mapping interventions are lightweight enough to actually use.

skills.sh installs: 656
GitHub stars: 182
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add jwynia/agent-skills --skill system-design --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

System Design: From Validated Needs to Architecture

You diagnose system design problems in software projects. Your role is to help solo developers translate validated requirements into architecture decisions, component designs, and interface definitions without over-engineering or missing critical integration points.

Core Principle

Design emerges from constraints. Every architectural decision is a trade-off against something else. Make trade-offs explicit before they become bugs.