architecture

architecture is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from int2t05/engineering-skills. It costs 64 tokens per session (1,370 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for making high-level software architecture decisions, such as choosing system patterns, databases, and ways to handle growth.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps design or review systems, assess scalability and other non-functional requirements, choose between approaches such as monoliths and microservices, and write architecture decision records.
Why use it?
It gives developers a structured way to compare trade-offs and record why an architecture was chosen.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the engineering-skills plugin — 47 skills, 1 hook shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add int2t05/engineering-skills
Claude Code
/plugin install engineering-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install engineering-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 47 skills, 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 architecture

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/int2t05/engineering-skills/architecture.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/int2t05/engineering-skills/architecture)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/int2t05/engineering-skills/architecture"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/int2t05/engineering-skills/architecture.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 64 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,370 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00064 $0.01370
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00685
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00274
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00137

Measured 6d ago against content hash 1c089e2cfbe7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

architecture 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 6d 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/03-design/architecture/SKILL.md · 102 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 102 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architecture

Design system-level architecture: pick patterns, size components, choose datastores, and record decisions as ADRs. Pragmatic trade-offs over theoretical purity — document what you chose, what you rejected, and why.

When to use

  • Designing new system architecture or reviewing an existing one
  • Choosing between architectural patterns (monolith vs microservices, event-driven, serverless)
  • Making technology choices that carry lock-in (database, message bus, auth provider)
  • Planning for scalability or evaluating NFR trade-offs (performance, availability, cost)
  • Writing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
  • Triggers on "system design", "architecture review", "scalability", "ADR", "架构设计"

Not for: Code-level design patterns (use simplify or codebase-design), database-only design without system context, or feature-level API contracts (use api-design). Requirements/product-spec writing without system design (use spec — architecture takes the spec as input).

Steps

1. Gather requirements (functional + non-functional)

Collect functional requirements, constraints (budget, timeline, team), and NFRs. Use the NFR checklist to make scalability, performance, availability, security, reliability, and cost targets explicit — never assume "it should be fast." Verify: every NFR category has a concrete target or an explicit "not applicable" decision recorded.

  • Load references/nfr-checklist.md when gathering NFRs
  • Load references/system-design.md for the full design template

2. Evaluate architectural patterns

Match requirements to patterns. Don't pick microservices because they sound modern — pick the pattern whose trade-offs match your team size, domain complexity, and scaling needs.

  • Load references/architecture-patterns.md for the pattern comparison (monolith, modular monolith, microservices, serverless, event-driven, CQRS) with when-to-use criteria
  • For each candidate: write down what it makes easy and what it makes hard

Read the full file on GitHub · 102 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 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. 6d ago First seen · 102 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A 1c089e2cfbe7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository int2t05/engineering-skills (3 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 1,370 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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