design

design is a skill for Claude Code from Hainrixz/claude-db. It costs 81 tokens per session (922 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing a database for a new project and sketching its starting data model. It compares options such as relational databases, document stores, graphs, and vector databases with PostgreSQL, a common general-purpose default.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose a database engine, compare it with PostgreSQL, and create a starter model and diagram. If the project description lacks important details, it asks a few focused questions first.
Why use it?
It helps when you are unsure which kind of database fits your data and how the application will use it. It also makes the trade-offs, lock-in, and operational work easier to see before building.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the claude-db plugin — 36 skills, 6 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to choose a database engine, compare it with PostgreSQL, and create a starter model and diagram. If the project description lacks important details, it asks a few focused questions first.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hainrixz/claude-db/design
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 Hainrixz/claude-db --skill design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Hainrixz/claude-db

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-db, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 36 skills, 6 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 design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hainrixz/claude-db/design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hainrixz/claude-db/design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hainrixz/claude-db/design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hainrixz/claude-db/design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 922 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.
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 $0.00081 $0.00922
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00461
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00184
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00092

Measured 8d ago against content hash f35b3c49c0ac, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design 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 8d 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.

skills/design/SKILL.md · 32 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 32 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/claude-db:design

Greenfield engine choice + starter model. This is module M0 (engine-selection): a recommendation, not a score/claude-db:design never produces the two audit scores and never writes to a database.

$ARGUMENTS = a plain-language description of the project (the data, the access patterns, the scale, any constraints). If it's too thin to choose well, ask 2–3 sharp questions first — or hand off to /claude-db:start for the full guided wizard.

What to do

  1. Walk the M0 decision tree (references/engine-selection-tree.md; see also references/detection-signals.md and data-tiers.md for the paradigm signals): from the access patterns and shape of the data, narrow to a paradigm (relational / document / key-value / wide-column / vector / time-series / graph), then to a concrete engine.
  2. Recommend an engine — and always compare it against the boring default (Postgres for most app workloads). State plainly when the boring default wins (it usually does) and what specific, concrete need would justify reaching for something else. Be honest about lock-in and operational cost; never fabricate prices, latency, throughput, or benchmark numbers — describe trade-offs qualitatively or mark needs_api if a real figure is required.
  3. Hand back a starter data model for the recommended engine — core entities, keys (UUIDv7/ULID/bigint as appropriate, never floats for money, timestamptz/UTC), the obvious relationships/embeddings, and the constraints/indexes a sane first migration would include.
  4. Draw a paradigm-aware diagram with node scripts/gen-diagram.mjs --file <schema> [--paradigm relational|document|key-value|wide-column|graph] (paradigm-aware: ERD for relational, access-pattern map for document, key+GSI sketch for DynamoDB/KV, node/edge for graph).

Format — novice-first, with an expandable technical layer

  • Lead with a plain, novice-friendly explanation: which database, in one sentence, and why — no jargon up front.
  • Then an expandable technical layer: the DDL/collection spec, index choices, key strategy, and the design-rule rationale (which audit modules each choice satisfies, e.g. M2 keys, M4 types, M11 indexing) for the reader who wants depth.
  • Close by offering: "When you have a first schema, run /claude-db:audit to score it on Design & Integrity and Performance & Scale."

Read the full file on GitHub · 32 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. 8d ago First seen · 32 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A f35b3c49c0ac

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design is a skill published in the GitHub repository Hainrixz/claude-db (19 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 922 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

dynamodb

Use when modeling or operating a DynamoDB table: deriving partition/sort keys from access patterns, single-table vs table-per-entity, adding a GSI/LSI, on-demand vs provisioned capacity, or diagnosing hot-partition throttling. NOT relational schema/SQL/EXPLAIN (that is postgresdb), NOT aggregation-pipeline document…

ericrisco/rsc-harness · 82 tokens

malloy-lookml-review

Analyze LookML files as prior art for Malloy modeling. Used during Step 1 (DISCOVER) when .lkml files are present. Coordinates reference files that extract business logic, relationships, and curation decisions. Works with or without a database connection.

malloydata/publisher · 58 tokens

convex-migrations

Schema migration strategies for evolving applications including adding new fields, backfilling data, removing deprecated fields, index migrations, and zero-downtime migration patterns.

waynesutton/convexskills · 35 tokens

database-design-patterns

Database schema design patterns and optimization strategies for relational and NoSQL databases. Use when designing database schemas, optimizing query performance, or implementing data persistence layers at scale.

NickCrew/Claude-Cortex · 37 tokens

database-sql

Design database schemas, write efficient SQL queries, create migrations, and optimize database performance. Use when working with databases, writing queries, or designing data models.

asgarovf/locusai · 35 tokens

data-design

Data modeling, schema design, and data architecture.

miles990/claude-software-skills · 12 tokens