nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs

nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs is a skill for Claude Code from nWave-ai/nWave. It costs 37 tokens per session (2,112 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing how software should be organized and deployed. It compares approaches such as layered applications, modular monoliths, microservices, event-driven systems, and pipe-and-filter pipelines.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when selecting an architecture for a new system or reviewing whether an existing architecture fits its complexity, team, and scaling needs.
Why use it?
It makes the costs and benefits of different structures visible before a team commits to one.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it when selecting an architecture for a new system or reviewing whether an existing architecture fits its complexity, team, and scaling needs.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs
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 nWave-ai/nWave --skill nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nWave-ai/nWave

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,112 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 $0.00037 $0.02112
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.01056
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00422
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00211

Measured 11d ago against content hash c7ea53f3af39, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs 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.

nWave/skills/nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs/SKILL.md · 216 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 216 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architectural Styles: Selection and Trade-offs

Style Selection Decision Tree

Start here. Answer the dominant driver, follow to recommended style.

Is the domain complex with rich business rules?
  YES -> Do you need infrastructure independence and high testability?
    YES -> Hexagonal / Clean / Onion (functionally equivalent, different terminology)
    NO  -> Is the domain well-understood with clear module boundaries?
      YES -> Modular Monolith (single deployment, structured boundaries)
      NO  -> Layered Architecture (simple, well-known, fast to start)
  NO -> Is this a feature-heavy application with independent feature teams?
    YES -> Vertical Slice (per-feature organization, CQRS-friendly)
    NO  -> Do you need independent deployment and scaling per capability?
      YES -> Can the team handle distributed system operational complexity?
        YES -> Microservices
        NO  -> Modular Monolith (extract to services later)
      NO  -> Is the primary concern async workflows or event-driven processing?
        YES -> Event-Driven Architecture
        NO  -> Is this a data processing pipeline?
          YES -> Pipe and Filter
          NO  -> Layered Architecture (sensible default)

Cross-Cutting Comparison Matrix

Style Dep. Direction Organization Deployment Best For Team Size
Hexagonal/Clean/Onion Inward (DIP) Ports + adapters Single process Infrastructure-agnostic domains Any
Layered (N-Tier) Top-down Horizontal layers Single/multi-tier Simple CRUD, rapid development Small-medium
Vertical Slice Per-feature Feature folders Single process Feature-heavy, CQRS systems Medium-large
Microservices Per-service Service boundaries Distributed Independent teams, polyglot Large
Event-Driven Pub-sub Events + handlers Distributed Async workflows, audit, decoupling Medium-large
CQRS Read/write split Command + query models Single or distributed Different read/write scaling Medium
Pipe and Filter Data flow Sequential filters Single or distributed ETL, data processing Any
Modular Monolith Inward per module Domain modules Single process Structured monolith, future extraction Small-medium

Read the full file on GitHub · 216 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. 11d ago First seen · 216 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A c7ea53f3af39

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nw-architectural-styles-tradeoffs is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (610 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 2,112 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 2026-08-30.

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