nw-design

nw-design is a skill for Claude Code from nWave-ai/nWave. It costs 57 tokens per session (4,964 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for designing software architecture and choosing technologies based on project requirements. It can produce C4 diagrams, which show a system from broad context down to individual components.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose an architecture scope, evaluate technology options, record trade-offs, and create an architecture brief.
Why use it?
It makes architecture decisions explicit and compares alternatives before implementation begins.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md.

Good fit Use it to choose an architecture scope, evaluate technology options, record trade-offs…

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

Made for: Claude Code.

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 nw-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,964 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 $0.00057 $0.04964
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.02482
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00993
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00496

Measured 3d ago against content hash 288b83d71b1d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nw-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.

nWave/skills/nw-design/SKILL.md · 280 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 280 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

NW-DESIGN: Architecture Design

Wave: DESIGN (wave 3 of 6) | Agents: Morgan (nw-solution-architect), nw-system-designer, nw-ddd-architect | Command: *design-architecture

Overview

Execute DESIGN wave through discovery-driven architecture design. The command starts with two interactive decisions:

  1. Design Scope — routes to the right architect: system-level (@nw-system-designer), domain-level (@nw-ddd-architect), application-level (@nw-solution-architect), or full stack (all three in sequence).
  2. Interaction Mode — guide (architect asks questions, you decide together) or propose (architect reads requirements, presents 2-3 options with trade-offs).

All architects write to docs/product/architecture/brief.md (SSOT), each in its own section. Analyzes existing codebase, evaluates open-source alternatives, produces C4 diagrams (Mermaid) as mandatory output.

Output Tiers (per D2)

Provenance: feature lean-wave-documentation — D2 (schema-typed sections), D10 (one-line expansion descriptions). Tier-1 [REF] sections (always emitted) + Tier-2 EXPANSION CATALOG items (lazy, on-demand) are the two output bands. Full contract: nWave/skills/nw-density-resolution-contract/SKILL.md.

Tier-1 [REF] — always emitted

Under ## Wave: DESIGN / [REF] <Section> headings:

  • DDD list — D-numbered design decisions with verdicts and one-line rationale
  • Component decomposition — table of components with paths and change types
  • Driving ports — inbound surfaces (CLI, skill, HTTP) named per the C4 contract
  • Driven ports + adapters — outbound side-effects with adapter mapping
  • Technology choices — pinned languages/frameworks/runtime versions
  • Decisions table — DDD-N row per locked decision (no rationale prose)
  • Reuse Analysis table — every overlapping component classified EXTEND or CREATE NEW
  • Open questions — items deliberately deferred to DISTILL/DELIVER

Tier-2 EXPANSION CATALOG — lazy, on-demand (per D10)

Rendered under ## Wave: DESIGN / [WHY|HOW] <Section> only when requested via --expand <id> (DDD-2), the broad wave-end menu (expansion_prompt = "ask"), a declared trigger under expansion_prompt = "ask-intelligent", mode = "full" auto-expansion, or an ad-hoc user request mid-session.

Read the full file on GitHub · 280 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. 3d ago First seen · 280 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A 288b83d71b1d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nw-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (605 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 4,964 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 2026-09-03.

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