What problem does it solve?
Proactive software design guidance for architecture, interfaces, and implementation planning. Use this skill when helping users make decisions before or during implementation: planning features, designing APIs, structuring modules, or evaluating architectural approaches.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Design methodology: understand problems, identify abstractions, design interfaces first, evaluate information hiding, consider alternatives, plan verification, and plan failure/rollback.
- Design principles: strategic thinking, module depth, information management, separation of concerns.
- Testing and closed-loop verification: define coverage strategies, unit/integration/end-to-end tests, manual smoke tests, verification evidence.
- Performance considerations: assess time/space complexity, scale assumptions, measure before optimizing, document intentional tradeoffs.
- Coding style: straightforward inline flow, single-purpose helpers, clear naming.
- Comments as design tools: interface and implementation comments guidance.
- Red flags: avoid shallow modules, information leakage, temporal decomposition, overexposure, etc.
- Gathering context and clarifications: explore patterns, identify abstractions, check integration with existing code.
- Questions to clarify: scale, performance budgets, integration boundaries, extensibility, operational constraints, verification/rollback.
Quick Start
Apply this skill to guide architecture decisions, API design, and module structure before or during implementation.