system-design-techniques

system-design-techniques is a skill for Claude Code from volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents. It costs 71 tokens per session (2,725 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for turning requirements into a technical specification: what the system should contain, how services relate, how APIs behave, and why key decisions were made. It uses architecture diagrams, domain boundaries, REST conventions, requirements standards, and decision records.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to map system architecture, divide a product into service or domain areas, define REST APIs, structure requirements, and record architecture decisions.
Why use it?
It gives a shared, traceable description of a system before implementation, reducing ambiguity and mismatches between requirements, services, and APIs.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the sdlc-agents plugin — 12 skills, 13 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to map system architecture, divide a product into service or domain areas, define REST APIs, structure requirements, and record architecture decisions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques
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 volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents --skill system-design-techniques
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install sdlc-agents, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills, 13 agents.

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 system-design-techniques

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques/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 system-design-techniques

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents/system-design-techniques.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,725 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 $0.00071 $0.02725
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.01362
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00545
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00272

Measured 8d ago against content hash 9e57012624e5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

system-design-techniques 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 8d 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.

skills/system-design-techniques/SKILL.md · 244 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 244 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

System Design Techniques — SA reference

This skill encodes industry-standard system analysis techniques used by the system-analyst. Inspired by:

  • C4 Model (Simon Brown) — architecture diagrams at multiple zoom levels
  • DDD (Eric Evans, Vaughn Vernon) — bounded contexts, ubiquitous language
  • REST design (Roy Fielding, Mark Massé "REST API Design Rulebook")
  • IEEE 29148:2018 — Systems and software engineering — Requirements engineering
  • ADR (Michael Nygard) — Architecture Decision Records

We use a focused subset — enough discipline to make SPEC professional and traceable, without ceremony overhead.


C4 Model — for the "Affected services" / "Architecture" sections

C4 has four zoom levels. The system-analyst uses two:

Level 1: System Context

Who interacts with the system from outside? Single box for our system, surrounded by external actors and external systems.

The project's $KB_DIR/kb/architecture.md lists the external actors and integrations — use it as the source.

Use Mermaid to draw it (Plane renders Mermaid in markdown):

flowchart LR
    Customer((Customer)) --> Storefront[<frontend-app>]
    Operator((Internal user)) --> Console[<admin-app>]
    Storefront & Console --> API[<backend-app>]
    API --> ExternalA[<external integration>]
    API --> ExternalB[<payment / delivery / object storage / …>]

In SPEC: include this only when the change affects the system boundary (new external integration, new actor type). Otherwise skip.

Level 2: Container view

Inside the system — what runs separately. Backend services + workers + cache + database + frontends.

Use only when change spans multiple containers (e.g. new background task that interacts with API + cache).

Levels 3 (Component) and 4 (Code)

Skip in SPEC. Component-level structure is for code review (architect's ARCH_REVIEW or coder's PLAN). Don't pre-implement in SPEC.


DDD — Bounded Contexts mapped to project services

Domain-Driven Design's most useful concept is bounded context: a logical boundary inside which a domain model is consistent. Each project service / app is a bounded context.

Read the full file on GitHub · 244 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. 8d ago First seen · 244 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A 9e57012624e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

system-design-techniques is a skill published in the GitHub repository volodchenkov/claude-sdlc-agents (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 2,725 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

mem0-oss-to-platform

Plan and then execute a migration of a project from the mem0 open-source / self-hosted SDK (the local Memory class) to the mem0 Platform / hosted / managed SDK (the MemoryClient class). Use this whenever a developer wants to move, switch, or migrate their mem0 usage off OSS/self-hosted to the hosted API — e.g.…

mem0ai/mem0 · 273 tokens

agui-dotnet-protobuf

Use the protobuf wire transport (instead of the default Server-Sent Events) for an AG-UI connection with the AG-UI .NET SDK — a compact binary event stream negotiated via the Accept header. USE FOR: making an AGUIChatClient prefer protobuf by wiring an AGUIEventStreamHandler with ProtobufEventStreamFormatter (then…

ag-ui-protocol/ag-ui · 162 tokens

azure-mgmt-botservice-dotnet

Azure Resource Manager SDK for Bot Service in .NET. Management plane operations for creating and managing Azure Bot resources, channels (Teams, DirectLine, Slack), and connection settings. Triggers: "Bot Service", "BotResource", "Azure Bot", "DirectLine channel", "Teams channel", "bot management .NET", "create bot".

microsoft/skills · 78 tokens

fastapi-router-py

Create FastAPI routers with CRUD operations, authentication dependencies, and proper response models. Use when building REST API endpoints, creating new routes, implementing CRUD operations, or adding authenticated endpoints in FastAPI applications.

microsoft/skills · 46 tokens

migrate-segw-to-rap

Reverse-engineer a SEGW-built OData V2 service (MPC/DPC/MPCEXT/DPCEXT) into a modern RAP V4 service — tables, CDS views (interface + projection), behavior definitions, draft entities, service definition + binding. Use when asked to "migrate this SEGW service to RAP", "convert OData V2 to V4 RAP", "modernize this…

arc-mcp/arc-1 · 106 tokens

telnyx-messaging-hosted-curl

Set up hosted SMS numbers, toll-free verification, and RCS messaging. Use when migrating numbers or enabling rich messaging features. This skill provides REST API (curl) examples.

team-telnyx/ai · 45 tokens