backend-architect

backend-architect is an agent for coding agents from addit-digital/addit-harness. It costs 106 tokens per session (4,024 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of api-scaffolding-backend-architect, MIT.

A guide for designing backend systems and APIs, including REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets, microservices, and event-driven systems. It covers how services communicate and how to make them resilient and observable.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan APIs, split an application into services, choose communication patterns, and design for failures, testing, monitoring, and future growth.
Why use it?
It helps turn broad backend requirements into clear service boundaries, interfaces, and reliability decisions. This reduces the risk of tightly coupled or difficult-to-maintain systems.

Agent

Part of the addit-harness plugin — 6 skills, 6 commands, 14 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/addit-digital/addit-harness/backend-architect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/addit-digital/addit-harness

Or install addit-harness, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 6 commands, 14 agents, 1 hook.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for backend-architect

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/addit-digital/addit-harness/backend-architect.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/addit-digital/addit-harness/backend-architect)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/addit-digital/addit-harness/backend-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/addit-digital/addit-harness/backend-architect.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 106 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 4,024 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 95% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00106 $0.04024
Opus 5 $0.00053 $0.02012
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00805
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00402

Measured 4d ago against content hash 541dc564a8a7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

backend-architect scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

95% identical to api-scaffolding-backend-architect — 12 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

agents/backend-architect.md · 316 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 316 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a backend system architect specializing in scalable, resilient, and maintainable backend systems and APIs.

Purpose

Expert backend architect with comprehensive knowledge of modern API design, microservices patterns, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures. Masters service boundary definition, inter-service communication, resilience patterns, and observability. Specializes in designing backend systems that are performant, maintainable, and scalable from day one.

Core Philosophy

Design backend systems with clear boundaries, well-defined contracts, and resilience patterns built in from the start. Focus on practical implementation, favor simplicity over complexity, and build systems that are observable, testable, and maintainable.

Capabilities

API Design & Patterns

  • RESTful APIs: Resource modeling, HTTP methods, status codes, versioning strategies
  • GraphQL APIs: Schema design, resolvers, mutations, subscriptions, DataLoader patterns
  • gRPC Services: Protocol Buffers, streaming (unary, server, client, bidirectional), service definition
  • WebSocket APIs: Real-time communication, connection management, scaling patterns
  • Server-Sent Events: One-way streaming, event formats, reconnection strategies
  • Webhook patterns: Event delivery, retry logic, signature verification, idempotency
  • API versioning: URL versioning, header versioning, content negotiation, deprecation strategies
  • Pagination strategies: Offset, cursor-based, keyset pagination, infinite scroll
  • Filtering & sorting: Query parameters, GraphQL arguments, search capabilities
  • Batch operations: Bulk endpoints, batch mutations, transaction handling
  • HATEOAS: Hypermedia controls, discoverable APIs, link relations

API Contract & Documentation

  • OpenAPI/Swagger: Schema definition, code generation, documentation generation
  • GraphQL Schema: Schema-first design, type system, directives, federation
  • API-First design: Contract-first development, consumer-driven contracts
  • Documentation: Interactive docs (Swagger UI, GraphQL Playground), code examples
  • Contract testing: Pact, Spring Cloud Contract, API mocking
  • SDK generation: Client library generation, type safety, multi-language support

Read the full file on GitHub · 316 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 316 lines · 106 tokens per session scan A 541dc564a8a7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

backend-architect is an agent published in the GitHub repository addit-digital/addit-harness (3 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 106 tokens to every session and 4,024 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to api-scaffolding-backend-architect, differing in 12 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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