System Design & Architecture Standards
SKILL.md
System Design & Architecture Standards
Priority: P0 (FOUNDATIONAL)
Architectural Principles
- SoC: Divide into distinct sections per concern.
- SSOT: One source, reference elsewhere.
- Fail Fast: Fail visibly when errors occur.
- Graceful Degradation: Core functional even if secondary fails.
Modularity & Coupling
- High Cohesion: Related functionality in one module.
- Loose Coupling: Use interfaces for communication.
- DI: Inject dependencies, don't hardcode.
Common Patterns
- Layered: Presentation → Logic → Data.
- Event-Driven: Async communication between decoupled components.
- Clean/Hexagonal: Core logic independent of frameworks.
- Statelessness: Favor stateless for scaling/testing.
Distributed Systems
- CAP: Trade-off Consistency/Availability/Partition tolerance. See CAP & Consistency Patterns.
- Idempotency: Operations repeatable without side effects. See Idempotency Patterns.
- Circuit Breaker: Fail fast on failing services. See Resilience Patterns.
- Eventual Consistency: Design for async data sync. See CAP & Consistency Patterns.
Documentation & Evolution
- Design Docs: Write specs before major implementations.
- Versioning: Version APIs/schemas for backward compatibility.
- Extensibility: Use Strategy/Factory for future changes.