mcpbeat

System Design

anthropics/system-design

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.

This is a copy. The original lives at w95/system-design.

327 tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
1
files
instructions only
1
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
23273
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository 
npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill system-design

The instruction itself

8 sections, as written by the author

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.

Repackaged in 1 other repositories

same content, different owner
w95/awesome-claude-corporate-skills open on GitHub →

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take anthropics/system-design from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.