system-architect

C4 diagrams model system architecture across four levels: context, container, component, and code. Use this Skill to generate Mermaid-formatted C4 diagrams that define boundaries, responsibilities, and relationships between system parts, enabling stakeholders to visualize architecture at appropriate abstraction levels.

An ADR documents a significant architectural decision, its context, alternatives considered, and rationale. Write ADRs during architecture reviews to capture trade-offs, justify choices between patterns, and create a searchable decision history that helps teams understand why the system was designed a particular way.

Trade-off analysis evaluates quality attributes—scalability, maintainability, security, cost—across candidate patterns like microservices, layered, or serverless architectures. This Skill applies ATAM-style and Payoff matrix approaches to weigh pros and cons, helping you select the pattern that best balances your system's requirements.

Yes. This Skill covers multiple architecture patterns including microservices, event-driven, serverless, layered, and hexagonal designs. Generate pattern-specific C4 diagrams, ADRs, and trade-off analyses tailored to your chosen pattern and functional requirements.

Architecture design generates C4 diagrams in Mermaid format, ADR templates in Markdown, trade-off analyses, and architecture documentation. Outputs integrate with steering files and are exported as Markdown, providing maintainable, version-controllable records of your design decisions.

Define container and component boundaries in C4 diagrams, then specify responsibilities through architecture documentation and ADRs. This Skill generates the diagrams and decision records needed to communicate how your system separates concerns and assigns ownership across layers and services.