architecture-design

architecture-design is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from shawnpang/startup-founder-skills. It costs 60 tokens per session (1,747 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidance for designing or evaluating software architecture: how services, data, APIs, infrastructure, databases, and dependencies fit together. It also covers diagrams and architecture decision records, which document important technical choices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Planning new systems, choosing between monoliths and microservices, selecting databases, analyzing dependencies, finding bottlenecks, and documenting architecture decisions.
Why use it?
It turns a broad system-design question into explicit requirements, constraints, trade-offs, and a documented design.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Planning new systems, choosing between monoliths and microservices, selecting databases, analyzing dependencies, finding bottlenecks, and documenting architecture decisions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/architecture-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 shawnpang/startup-founder-skills --skill architecture-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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-design

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/architecture-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/architecture-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,747 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 $0.00060 $0.01747
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00873
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00349
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00175

Measured 12d ago against content hash edbd79d74140, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

architecture-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 12d 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:

skills/architecture-design/SKILL.md · 140 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 140 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Architecture Design

When to Use

  • Starting a new product or major feature that needs system design
  • Choosing between monolith, modular monolith, microservices, or event-driven patterns
  • Selecting a database (SQL vs NoSQL vs specialized) for a new project
  • Analyzing dependencies for circular references, coupling issues, or outdated packages
  • Creating architecture diagrams (Mermaid, PlantUML, ASCII) for documentation or review
  • Writing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for technical choices
  • Evaluating scalability bottlenecks or planning capacity

Context Required

From startup-context: product description, tech stack, current state (prototype/beta/scaling), team size, expected scale (users, requests/sec, data volume). If missing, ask:

  • What does this system need to do? (core use cases)
  • What scale are you targeting? (users, requests/sec, data size)
  • What is your team size and backend experience level?
  • Are there hard constraints? (compliance, latency, budget, existing infra)

Workflow

  1. Gather requirements — Identify functional requirements (use cases), non-functional requirements (latency, throughput, availability, consistency), and constraints (budget, team size, compliance).
  2. Run architecture assessment — Analyze the existing project structure to detect current patterns (MVC, layered, hexagonal, microservices indicators), code organization issues (god classes, mixed concerns), and layer violations.
  3. Analyze dependencies — Examine the dependency tree for circular dependencies, coupling scores, and outdated packages across npm, Python, Go, or Rust projects.
  4. Select architecture pattern — Use the decision workflows below to match team size, deployment needs, and data boundaries to the right pattern. For most early-stage startups, recommend modular monolith.
  5. Select database — Match data characteristics, scale requirements, and consistency needs to the appropriate database technology using the selection workflow below.
  6. Design data model — Produce an ER diagram in Mermaid. Define entity ownership: which module/service writes, others read via API.
  7. Define API contracts — Specify key endpoints with method, path, request/response shapes, and error codes. Version from day one.
  8. Generate architecture diagram — Produce a Mermaid C4 or flowchart diagram showing components, data stores, external services, and communication patterns.
  9. Write ADRs — Document key decisions using the ADR format below.
  10. Identify risks — Call out single points of failure, data consistency risks, and scaling bottlenecks with mitigations.

Read the full file on GitHub · 140 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. 12d ago First seen · 140 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A edbd79d74140

Subscribe to this mod's changes

architecture-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository shawnpang/startup-founder-skills (321 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 1,747 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 2026-08-30.

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