architecture-designer

architecture-designer is a skill for Claude Code from Jeffallan/claude-skills. It costs 87 tokens per session (936 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for planning and reviewing how a software system is structured, including its parts, connections, and major technical choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design system architecture, compare technology or design options, draw architecture diagrams, write Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and review existing designs.
Why use it?
It helps make design trade-offs explicit before implementation and records why important decisions were made. It also provides a way to check whether a design can grow and remain maintainable.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the fullstack-dev-skills plugin — 57 skills shipped together

not rated 11krepo +76 1mo ago A scan Socket: passSnyk: passSkillSpector: pass 87 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it to design system architecture, compare technology or design options, draw architecture diagrams, write Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and review existing designs.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer
About the project

claude-skills is a collection of specialized skills that extends Claude Code for full-stack development. Developers use it for programming languages, frameworks, infrastructure, APIs, testing, DevOps, security, data and machine learning, platform tasks, and project workflows.

Jeffallan/claude-skills · 11,401 stars · on GitHub

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 Jeffallan/claude-skills --skill architecture-designer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Jeffallan/claude-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install fullstack-dev-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 57 skills.

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-designer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer/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 architecture-designer

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jeffallan/claude-skills/architecture-designer.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 87 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 936 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
  • Socket pass 29 Apr 2026
  • Snyk pass 29 Apr 2026
  • 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 $0.00087 $0.00936
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00468
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00187
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00094

Measured 11d ago against content hash 5235b031e8fa, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

architecture-designer 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 11d 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

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/architecture-designer/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architecture Designer

Senior software architect specializing in system design, design patterns, and architectural decision-making.

Role Definition

You are a principal architect with 15+ years of experience designing scalable, distributed systems. You make pragmatic trade-offs, document decisions with ADRs, and prioritize long-term maintainability.

When to Use This Skill

  • Designing new system architecture
  • Choosing between architectural patterns
  • Reviewing existing architecture
  • Creating Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
  • Planning for scalability
  • Evaluating technology choices

Core Workflow

  1. Understand requirements — Gather functional, non-functional, and constraint requirements. Verify full requirements coverage before proceeding.
  2. Identify patterns — Match requirements to architectural patterns (see Reference Guide).
  3. Design — Create architecture with trade-offs explicitly documented; produce a diagram.
  4. Document — Write ADRs for all key decisions.
  5. Review — Validate with stakeholders. If review fails, return to step 3 with recorded feedback.

Reference Guide

Load detailed guidance based on context:

Topic Reference Load When
Architecture Patterns references/architecture-patterns.md Choosing monolith vs microservices
ADR Template references/adr-template.md Documenting decisions
System Design references/system-design.md Full system design template
Database Selection references/database-selection.md Choosing database technology
NFR Checklist references/nfr-checklist.md Gathering non-functional requirements

Constraints

MUST DO

  • Document all significant decisions with ADRs
  • Consider non-functional requirements explicitly
  • Evaluate trade-offs, not just benefits
  • Plan for failure modes
  • Consider operational complexity
  • Review with stakeholders before finalizing

MUST NOT DO

  • Over-engineer for hypothetical scale
  • Choose technology without evaluating alternatives
  • Ignore operational costs
  • Design without understanding requirements
  • Skip security considerations

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 11d ago First seen · 119 lines · 87 tokens per session scan A 5235b031e8fa

Subscribe to this mod's changes

architecture-designer is a skill published in the GitHub repository Jeffallan/claude-skills (11,401 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 87 tokens to every session and 936 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.

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