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System Design

Official
anthropics·vlatest·other·Apache-2.0

Designs human-centered AI systems, optimizing user experience and ethical considerations through anthropocentric principles.

Repository

Install on your platform

Showing Claude Code. One command installs this skill into any of the agents below.

  1. 1

    Run this in your project

    terminal
    $ npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill system-design -a claude-code

  2. Uses the open-source skills CLI and needs Node.js. Add -g to install it for your user instead of this project.

What we know about this skill

Publisher

anthropics

Matched to the vendor's own GitHub organisation.

Install target

Live repository

Not pinned. Installing fetches whatever the repository holds at the time you run the command.

No human has reviewed this code. The checks below are a static scan of the files at one commit — nobody has run this skill or judged whether it works. A skill runs with whatever access you give your agent, so read the source before you install it.

Automated safety checks

scanned

This skill passed all 6 checks. We read its files at one commit and looked for the things that make a skill dangerous to run — not for whether it works.

  • Declares what it does: passed

    SKILL.md parses and declares a name and a description.

    SKILL.md exists, its frontmatter parses, and it declares a name and a description.

  • No undeclared network calls: passed

    Makes no network calls.

    Every host the skill dials — from its scripts, its config endpoints or the commands it tells the agent to run — is either well-known package and API infrastructure or declared in its own frontmatter. Links in documentation are not counted.

  • No obfuscated payloads: passed

    No encoded or obfuscated payloads.

    No base64, hex or compressed blob is decoded and then executed, and no encoded shell commands.

  • No credential access: passed

    Reads no keys, tokens, keychains or credential files.

    Neither the code nor the SKILL.md instructions read SSH keys, cloud credentials, keychains, token stores, browser cookie databases or dotfiles that hold secrets.

  • No pipe-to-shell installers: passed

    No pipe-to-shell or download-and-run installers.

    No `curl … | sh` pattern, in the code or in the instructions, that runs code fetched at run time.

  • Pinned to a commit: passed

    Scanned anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins at da38ec1ee8.

    The exact upstream commit SHA that was scanned is recorded, so the result refers to specific bytes.

Commit
da38ec1ee8
Manifest
engineering/skills/system-design/SKILL.md
Scanned
1 file, 43 lines
This is a static scan, not a review. It reads the skill's files; it does not run them, and it cannot tell you whether the skill is any good or whether the code does what its description says. A skill runs with whatever access you give your agent.
What each check looks for →

About this skill

The system-design skill enables AI agents to analyze complex architectural requirements and generate structured design proposals. It breaks down high-level goals into specific components, data flows, and infrastructure needs suitable for software development teams.

When to use it

  • You need to evaluate the scalability of a proposed application before writing code.
  • Your team requires a blueprint for integrating new microservices into an existing legacy system.
  • You are planning a database migration strategy that involves changing data models.
  • You want to identify potential bottlenecks in a real-time data processing pipeline.

Key capabilities

  • Generates comprehensive system architecture diagrams and descriptions.
  • Decomposes monolithic requirements into modular service components.
  • Suggests appropriate technology stacks based on performance constraints.
  • Outlines data flow patterns between different system layers.

Example prompts

"Design a scalable event-driven architecture for processing 10,000 transactions per second with eventual consistency." "Create a system design for a real-time collaborative document editor that supports offline mode and conflict resolution." "Outline the infrastructure components needed to build a global content delivery network with low latency in Asia-Pacific regions."

Tips & gotchas

Ensure you provide clear constraints regarding latency, throughput, and budget to get relevant technology recommendations. This skill focuses on structural planning; it does not generate executable code or configure cloud resources directly.