System Design

# 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.