Mongodb Schema Design

MongoDB performance problems usually trace back to schema design, not queries or indexes. This skill helps you decide between embedding and referencing data, avoid common anti-patterns like unnecessary collections and excessive lookups, and apply proven patterns like bucketing for time series or the extended reference pattern for caching frequently accessed fields. It's especially useful when migrating from SQL where the instinct to normalize everything will hurt you, or when you're hitting the 16MB document limit from unbounded arrays. The core principle is simple: data accessed together should be stored together. If you're doing a lot of lookups or your queries span multiple collections, your schema probably needs rethinking.

skills.sh installs: 7.2K
GitHub stars: 197
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add mongodb/agent-skills --skill mongodb-schema-design --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

MongoDB Schema Design

Data modeling patterns and anti-patterns for MongoDB, maintained by MongoDB. Bad schema is the root cause of most MongoDB performance and cost issues—queries and indexes cannot fix a fundamentally wrong model.