Large Skill: System Design Field Guide

This skill contains a longer narrative that resembles the kind of internal field guide teams use when designing new systems. It is not intended to be exhaustive, but it is intentionally verbose so that token-counting tests have a substantial body of text to work with.

1. Clarify the Problem

Every system design effort should begin with a careful restatement of the problem. Engineers should write down:

• Who the primary users are and what they are trying to achieve.
• The most important success metrics for the system.
• Explicit non-goals that are deliberately out of scope.
• Constraints related to latency, throughput, security, or compliance.