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System Design · jamestorrevillas | DecimalAI

codingby jamestorrevillas

System Design

jamestorrevillas/system-design

Source jamestorrevillas/dev-skills ↗License MIT

Use this skill when designing large-scale systems, choosing between architectural patterns, evaluating trade-offs, designing for scalability and reliability, or preparing for system design interviews. Trigger on keywords: system design, architecture, scalability, microservices, monolith, distributed system, design trade-offs, high availability, load balancing, caching strategy, database selection.

SkillScore86Maintained

Automatic

Coding pack

Last verified 8/3/2026

What it changes

Passed 19 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 18 of 22 without it.

Without skill82%

With skill86%

Checks it passed that the model alone missed

The response formats decisions using the fields Decision, Why, Trade-off, Alternative, and When to reconsider.

1 fixed18 passed either way3 still failing0 broke

Pass-rate lift: +5 pp
Tokens: +52%
Agent turns: 0%
Response time: -13%

Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/3/2026v119 of 22 cases passed with skill

Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.

Use this skill

Save it into your project's skills folder. Claude Code picks it up in its next session.

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/jamestorrevillas-system-design/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/jamestorrevillas-system-design/SKILL.md

Want it pinned and updatable? pip install "decimalai>=0.15", then decimalai skills add jamestorrevillas-system-design, and start Claude Code with claude --plugin-dir "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.agents"

1 · One-time — install the CLI (docs ↗)

pip install "decimalai>=0.15"

2 · Get the skill — writes .agents/skills/jamestorrevillas-system-design/ and pins it in .decimal/skills.lock

decimalai skills add jamestorrevillas-system-design

No CLI? Get the same file — curl · raw file

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/jamestorrevillas-system-design/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/jamestorrevillas-system-design/SKILL.md

Raw file: /s/jamestorrevillas-system-design/SKILL.md ↗ · machine-readable summary at /s/jamestorrevillas-system-design.json ↗

Safety checks: 3 of 3 passed

Code scan CleanIntent PassedContent Clean

See it in action

A test case the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.

Prompt

When evaluating relational databases vs NoSQL document stores for our checkout system, structure the decision evaluation using an explicit trade-off framework.

What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked	Without skill	With skill
The response formats decisions using the fields Decision, Why, Trade-off, Alternative, and When to reconsider.	Missed	Passed

case-20 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/3/2026 · answers are capped and redacted

What's inside

The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.

SKILL.md175 linessingle file

System Design

Design Process (Always Follow This Order)

Clarify requirements — functional AND non-functional
Estimate scale — users, requests/sec, data volume, read/write ratio
Define the API — what does the system expose?
Design the data model — what data, how stored, how accessed?
High-level architecture — major components and their relationships
Deep dive — zoom into the hardest or most critical parts
Identify bottlenecks — and how to address them

Requirements Clarification

Before designing anything, answer:

Functional: What does the system do? Scale: How many users? Requests/sec? Data volume? Growth rate? Availability: What's the acceptable downtime? (99.9% = 8.7h/yr, 99.99% = 52m/yr) Latency: What's the acceptable response time? (p99) Consistency: Strong vs eventual consistency? (CAP theorem) Read/Write ratio: Read-heavy? Write-heavy? Mixed? Geography: Single region? Global? Data sovereignty requirements?

Scalability Patterns

Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling

	Vertical	Horizontal
Method	Bigger machine	More machines
Limit	Hardware ceiling	Theoretically unlimited
Cost	Expensive	More cost-efficient
Downtime	Required	Zero downtime possible
Complexity	Simple	Requires load balancing, distributed design

Default: design for horizontal scaling from the start.

Track record

Benchmark

19 / 22

test cases passed, vs 18 / 22 without

Adoption

Users: 0
Times used: 0

Safety and source details

SkillSafety

✓ 3 of 3 passed

Code scan15 of 15 checks clean

0 critical · 0 warning · 0 info — scanner v4 — 8/1/2026

View 15 scanner checks

live_secretremote_code_executionreverse_shelldata_exfiltrationssrf_metadataagent_snoopinganti_refusaldestructive_commandsobfuscated_unicodeunicode_homoglyphopaque_blobsuspicious_urltool_overreachtrigger_abuseprompt_injection_phrasing

IntentSafe

LLM judge · does the skill do what it claims

ContentClean

LLM judge · policy & harmful-content review

Source

Imported

jamestorrevillas / dev-skills

.github/skills/system-design/SKILL.md

View on GitHub ↗

License MITImported 8/1/2026Version v1

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See it in action

What's inside

System Design

Design Process (Always Follow This Order)

Requirements Clarification

Scalability Patterns

Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling

Track record

Benchmark

Adoption

SkillSafety

Source

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