system-architect

system-architect is a skill for Claude Code from georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault. It costs 38 tokens per session (1,227 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A system-architecture guide for planning how software components, APIs, databases, caches, and security controls fit together. It compares options such as a single application (monolith) and multiple services (microservices).

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design new systems or features, choose APIs and databases, plan caching and message queues, and document scaling, recovery, authentication, and authorization decisions.
Why use it?
It helps developers make explicit trade-offs before implementation, including scalability, reliability, security, budget, and existing-system constraints.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/.

Good fit Use it to design new systems or features, choose APIs and databases, plan caching and message queues, and document scaling, recovery, authentication, and authorization decisions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect
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.

Any agent
npx skills add georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault --skill system-architect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault

Made for: Claude Code.

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 system-architect

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for system-architect

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault/system-architect.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,227 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found 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 5.1 $0.00038 $0.01227
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00613
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00245
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00123

Measured 9d ago against content hash 15299b0d0a92, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

system-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 9d 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

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

.claude/skills/system-architect/SKILL.md · 202 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 202 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

System Architect Skill

Design scalable, maintainable software systems.

When to Use

  • Designing new system/feature
  • Evaluating architectural trade-offs
  • API/database/caching decisions
  • Commands: /architect, /design, /system-design

Capabilities

1. System Design

  • Microservices vs monolith
  • API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
  • DB selection & schema design
  • Caching & message queues
  • Event-driven systems

2. Scalability

  • Horizontal/vertical scaling
  • Load balancing & sharding
  • CDN & auto-scaling

3. Reliability

  • HA patterns & DR planning
  • Circuit breaker & retry
  • Graceful degradation

4. Security

  • Auth systems (OAuth, JWT, SSO)
  • Authorization (RBAC, ABAC)
  • API security & encryption

Architecture Decision Process

Step 1: Requirements

1. Functional: Core features, workflows, integrations
2. Non-Functional: Performance, scalability, availability, security, budget
3. Constraints: Tech stack, team expertise, timeline, existing systems

Step 2: Pattern Selection

Reference patterns.json for patterns, tech recommendations, trade-offs.

Step 3: Design Doc Template

# Architecture Design Document

## 1. Overview
[High-level description]

## 2. Goals & Non-Goals

## 3. Architecture
### System Diagram
### Components
| Component | Responsibility | Technology |
|-----------|---------------|------------|

### Data Flow

## 4. Technical Decisions
### Decision 1: [Title]
- Context | Options | Decision | Rationale

## 5. API Design
## 6. Data Model
## 7. Security
## 8. Scalability
## 9. Monitoring & Observability
## 10. Risks & Mitigations

Pattern Reference

Communication

Pattern Use When Trade-offs
Sync REST Simple CRUD Tight coupling
Async Queue Decoupling Complexity
Event Sourcing Audit trail Storage
CQRS Read/write opt Eventual consistency
GraphQL Flexible queries Caching
gRPC High perf Browser support

Read the full file on GitHub · 202 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 9d ago First seen · 202 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 15299b0d0a92

Subscribe to this mod's changes

system-architect is a skill published in the GitHub repository georgekhananaev/claude-skills-vault (28 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,227 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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