nw-sd-framework

nw-sd-framework is a skill for Claude Code from nWave-ai/nWave. It costs 22 tokens per session (1,316 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured method for designing software systems, from clarifying requirements to choosing an architecture and checking its limits. It includes rough estimates for traffic, storage, and other resources.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for system design interviews, architecture proposals, capacity planning, and reviewing designs before implementation.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of building an overly complex system or missing important needs such as speed, reliability, or data consistency.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Good fit Use it for system design interviews, architecture proposals, capacity planning, and reviewing designs before implementation.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework
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-sd-framework
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-sd-framework

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework/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 nw-sd-framework

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nwave-ai/nwave/nw-sd-framework.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,316 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 $0.00022 $0.01316
Opus 5.5 $0.00009 $0.00526
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00004 $0.00263
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00132

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 2bad0995eb0e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

nw-sd-framework 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 1mo 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-sd-framework/SKILL.md · 126 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 126 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

System Design Framework

The 4-Step Process

Every system design follows this structure. Skipping steps is the top mistake.

Step 1: Understand the Problem and Establish Design Scope (3-10 min)

Narrow an impossibly broad question into a tractable problem.

Ask about: users and scale | most important features | read/write ratio | non-functional requirements (latency, availability, consistency) | existing infrastructure | special constraints (mobile-first, offline, regulatory)

Produce: functional requirements (3-5 bullets) | non-functional requirements (scale, latency, availability, consistency model) | capacity estimation (QPS, storage, bandwidth)

Red flags if skipped: designing a system nobody asked for | over-engineering for imaginary scale | missing critical constraints (GDPR, real-time)

Step 2: Propose High-Level Design and Get Buy-In (10-15 min)

Sketch the big picture. Validate before diving deep.

Do: draw architecture diagram (clients, servers, databases, caches, queues) | define API contract (REST/GraphQL/gRPC -- key endpoints) | design data model (entities, relationships, access patterns) | walk through 1-2 core use cases end-to-end | get buy-in: "Does this make sense before I go deeper?"

API patterns: RESTful for CRUD-heavy | GraphQL for flexible client queries | gRPC for internal service-to-service | WebSocket/SSE for real-time

Data model: SQL vs NoSQL based on access patterns, not hype | denormalization trade-offs | partitioning key selection (directly impacts scalability)

Step 3: Design Deep Dive (10-25 min)

Go deep on 2-3 components.

Choose: most technically challenging | most interesting trade-offs | bottleneck components (highest load, most failure-prone)

Depth means: specific algorithms (consistent hashing, Bloom filters) | failure modes and handling | scaling strategy per component | data flow with edge cases | monitoring and operational concerns

Step 4: Wrap Up (3-5 min)

Cover: summarize design in 2-3 sentences | identify known bottlenecks | what you'd improve with more time | operational concerns (monitoring, alerting, deployment) | future enhancements

Read the full file on GitHub · 126 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. 1mo ago First seen · 126 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 2bad0995eb0e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

nw-sd-framework is a skill published in the GitHub repository nWave-ai/nWave (620 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 1,316 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-06.

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