Explain System Tradeoffs

Reverse-engineer distributed system tradeoffs from code, configuration, deployment manifests, and architecture artifacts. Produce an evidence-based report that explains what the system prioritizes, what it sacrifices, where choices appear deliberate versus accidental, and what risks or misalignments deserve attention.

Every distributed system encodes its design tradeoffs in artifacts hiding in plain sight — configuration files, schema definitions, deployment manifests, timeout values, retry policies, and code patterns. This skill reads those artifacts like an architectural blueprint.

Evidence Tiers

When evaluating evidence, use three tiers to weigh confidence:

• Tier A (hard commitments): User-facing API/SLA language; explicit consistency or transaction guarantees; quorum/replication rules; schema invariants; wire-protocol requirements.