arch-microservices

Purpose

This skill enables the AI to design, decompose, and implement microservices architectures using specific tools like Kong/Traefik for API gateways, Istio for service meshes, and patterns like circuit breakers and sagas for resilience. Focus on breaking down monoliths into independent services while ensuring scalability and fault tolerance.

When to Use

Apply this skill when scaling applications beyond a monolith, such as e-commerce platforms with high traffic, or distributed systems needing isolation (e.g., payment processing separate from user management). Use it for new projects requiring API management or when retrofitting legacy apps for microservices to improve resilience and deployment speed.

Key Capabilities

• Decompose monoliths: Identify bounded contexts and split into services, e.g., using domain-driven design to separate user and order services.
• API Gateway: Configure Kong for routing and rate limiting, or Traefik for dynamic service discovery.
• Service Mesh: Deploy Istio to handle inter-service communication, including mTLS and traffic shifting.
• Circuit Breakers: Implement with Istio's Envoy proxies to prevent cascading failures by tripping breakers on high error rates.
• Distributed Transactions: Use saga patterns for long-running processes or outbox for event-driven consistency, ensuring atomicity across services.

Usage Patterns

To decompose a monolith, analyze dependencies and create separate services: Start by mapping modules to microservices, then define APIs. For API gateways, route requests through Kong by defining services and routes. In service meshes, inject Istio sidecars into pods for automatic traffic management. For circuit breakers, configure Istio policies to detect failures and fallback. Use sagas by orchestrating transactions via a coordinator service. Example pattern: Wrap service calls in a saga for multi-step operations, committing or compensating based on outcomes.