Architecture prompts
Write a technical design document. What we are building and why now: [THE PROBLEM AND THE TRIGGER] Who is affected: [USERS, TEAMS, SYSTEMS] Requirements: [FUNCTIONAL, PLUS ANY SCALE, LATENCY, AVAILABILITY, OR COMPLIANCE NUMBERS] Existing system: [WHAT IS THERE NOW, THE STACK, AND WHAT WE MUST NOT BREAK] Constraints: [TEAM SIZE, DEADLINE,
Technical Design Doc
Write the design doc that gets approved: problem, constraints, the chosen approach against real alternatives, and the risks stated up front.
Threat model this system. What it does and who uses it: [SYSTEM + USER TYPES INCLUDING ANONYMOUS ONES] Architecture, data flows, and dependencies: """ [PASTE THE DESIGN, THE RELEVANT CODE, OR A DESCRIPTION OF COMPONENTS AND HOW DATA MOVES BETWEEN THEM] """ Data handled: [WHAT KINDS, INCLUDING PERSONAL, PAYMENT, HEALTH, OR CREDENTIALS] Au
Threat Model
Threat model a feature or system with STRIDE: trust boundaries, ranked threats with attack paths, and mitigations mapped to real controls.
Design the retry and idempotency behavior for this operation. The operation and what it does: [e.g. "charge a card and create an order", "process an inbound webhook", "run a nightly sync job"] Where it runs and what calls it: [SERVICE, QUEUE, CRON, CLIENT] External systems it touches: [APIS, DATABASES, QUEUES, and whether each is idempot
Idempotency and Retry Design
Design safe retries for payments, webhooks, and jobs: idempotency keys, exactly-once boundaries, backoff, and the failure cases to test.
Help me make an architecture decision. The decision: [WHAT YOU'RE DECIDING, e.g. "how to handle background jobs", "monolith vs services for the new module"] System today: [STACK, SCALE, TEAM SIZE, DEPLOYMENT SETUP] Requirements that matter: [FUNCTIONAL + NUMBERS WHERE THEY EXIST: requests/sec, data volume, latency budget, team's operatio
Architecture Decision
Get 2-3 genuinely different architecture options with a trade-off table, a recommendation, and an ADR you can commit to the repo.
[DESIGN a new API / REVIEW my existing API] for [THE DOMAIN, e.g. "order management for our storefront"]. The resources and operations needed: [WHAT CLIENTS MUST BE ABLE TO DO: plain language list] Consumers: [INTERNAL SERVICES / THIRD-PARTY DEVELOPERS / MOBILE APPS: third parties raise the stakes on consistency and versioning] Existing
REST API Design
Design or review an API against the conventions that matter: resource naming, cursor pagination, RFC 9457 errors, idempotency, and OpenAPI 3.1.
Design the database schema for [THE FEATURE/SYSTEM, e.g. "orders, payments, and refunds for our marketplace"]. The entities and how they relate, in plain language: [DESCRIBE THE DOMAIN: what exists, what belongs to what, what changes often] Database: [POSTGRES (assumed) / MYSQL / OTHER + VERSION] Scale expectations, honestly: [ROWS/GROWT
Database Schema Design
Design a schema with the decisions that age well: right PK strategy, indexed FKs, timestamptz everywhere, and migrations that don't lock tables.