database-design

A guide for designing database tables, relationships, columns, and migrations when an application's stored data changes. A migration is a controlled change to a database structure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating tables, changing columns, redesigning relationships, writing migrations, or reviewing database-related changes.
Why use it?
It helps keep new or changed data structures consistent and protects data access and integrity during schema changes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/kbwen/agentic-os/database-design
Any agent
npx skills add KbWen/agentic-os --skill database-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/KbWen/agentic-os

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 13 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,134 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 $0.00013 $0.01134
Opus 5 $0.00006 $0.00567
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00227
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00113

Measured 3d ago against content hash 31eb0d403f37, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

database-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 3d 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:

.agents/skills/database-design/SKILL.md · 108 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 108 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Database Design

When to Apply

  • Classification: feature (if new tables/columns), architecture-change (schema redesign), hotfix (data-related bug)
  • Phase: /plan (schema design), /implement (migration creation), /review (schema review), /test (data integrity)
  • Trigger: Task involves creating tables, modifying schema, writing migrations, or changing data access patterns

Conventions

Customize after /app-init: Replace these generic conventions with your project's ADR and ORM-specific patterns.

Table Design

  • Every table MUST have: id (primary key), created_at, updated_at
  • Use UUIDs or auto-increment IDs consistently (per ADR decision)
  • Soft delete: add deleted_at column if ADR specifies soft delete
  • Table names: plural, snake_case (e.g., users, order_items)
  • Column names: snake_case (e.g., first_name, is_active)

Relationship Patterns

Relationship Implementation Example
One-to-Many Foreign key on "many" side orders.user_id → users.id
Many-to-Many Junction table user_roles (user_id, role_id)
One-to-One Foreign key + unique constraint user_profiles.user_id (UNIQUE) → users.id
Self-referencing Foreign key to same table categories.parent_id → categories.id

Index Strategy

  • Every foreign key column MUST have an index
  • Columns used in WHERE clauses frequently → add index
  • Composite indexes: put the most selective column first
  • Unique constraints for business uniqueness rules (email, username, etc.)
  • DO NOT over-index: every index slows writes

Migration Rules

  • One migration per logical change (don't mix table creation with data backfill)
  • Migrations MUST be reversible: every up must have a corresponding down
  • Never modify a shipped migration: create a new migration instead
  • Data migrations separate from schema migrations: schema first, data second
  • Test rollback: after writing migration, verify down works cleanly

Read the full file on GitHub · 108 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 3d ago First seen · 108 lines · 13 tokens per session scan A 31eb0d403f37

Subscribe to this mod's changes

database-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository KbWen/agentic-os (149 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 13 tokens to every session and 1,134 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.