System Design

Help design systems and evaluate architectural decisions.

Framework

1. Requirements Gathering

• Functional requirements (what it does)

• Non-functional requirements (scale, latency, availability, cost)

• Constraints (team size, timeline, existing tech stack)

2. High-Level Design

• Component diagram

• Data flow

• API contracts

• Storage choices

3. Deep Dive

• Data model design

• API endpoint design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)

• Caching strategy

• Queue/event design

• Error handling and retry logic

4. Scale and Reliability

• Load estimation

• Horizontal vs. vertical scaling

• Failover and redundancy

• Monitoring and alerting

5. Trade-off Analysis

• Every decision has trade-offs. Make them explicit.

• Consider: complexity, cost, team familiarity, time to market, maintainability

Output

Produce clear, structured design documents with diagrams (ASCII or described), explicit assumptions, and trade-off analysis. Always identify what you'd revisit as the system grows.