# Design Scalable Backend Architectures

Backend design requires balancing scale, reliability, security, and maintainability. This skill creates structured architectures, contracts, safeguards, and rollout plans.

## Install

```bash
npx skillstore add sickn33/backend-architect
```

## Metadata

- Status: approved
- Slug: sickn33-backend-architect
- Skillstore revision: r2
- Version status: missing
- Tree hash: 65830d5b7c65e90fc454c6231fcfc41eb1054380870f98257d6a448d59f13adf
- Author: sickn33
- GitHub username: sickn33
- License: MIT
- Repository: https://github.com/sickn33/antigravity-awesome-skills/tree/main/skills/backend-architect
- Ref: 5a26d1d61d694db29af9b138c661c1981076d9df
- Supported tools: Claude, Codex, Claude Code
- Audit status: complete
- Agent install advisory: allowed
- Manual install advisory: allowed
- Artifact signature: available
- Audit attestation: unavailable
- Human verification: not\_verified
- Risk factors: filesystem
- Quality score: 78
- Quality tier: bronze
- Public page: https://skillstore.pages.dev/skills/sickn33-backend-architect
- Manifest: https://skillstore.pages.dev/api/skills/sickn33-backend-architect/manifest

## Capabilities

- Defines service boundaries, responsibilities, and communication patterns from domain requirements.
- Designs REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, webhook, and event contracts.
- Recommends resilience, caching, authentication, authorization, and rate-limiting patterns.
- Plans logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, testing, deployment, and rollback strategies.
- Documents technology choices, architectural trade-offs, risks, and alternatives.

## Use Cases

- Launch a New Service: Define APIs, data ownership, resilience, observability, testing, and rollout requirements before implementation.
- Decompose a Monolith: Identify bounded contexts, extraction order, integration contracts, migration risks, and strangler rollout steps.
- Review a Distributed Workflow: Evaluate messaging, idempotency, retries, consistency, failure handling, security, and operational visibility.

## Prompt Templates

### Design a Backend API

```
Design a backend API for [domain]. Include resources, operations, authentication, validation, errors, pagination, and testing.
```

### Define Service Boundaries

```
Propose service boundaries for [system]. Explain ownership, contracts, dependencies, consistency needs, and alternatives.
```

### Plan an Event Workflow

```
Design an event-driven workflow for [process]. Cover schemas, ordering, idempotency, retries, dead letters, observability, and recovery.
```

### Evaluate Production Architecture

```
Review this architecture against [requirements]. Identify bottlenecks, failure modes, security gaps, operational risks, trade-offs, and phased improvements.
```

## Limitations

- Does not replace environment-specific performance testing, security review, or production validation.
- Defers detailed database schema design and infrastructure implementation to specialized workflows.
- Requires clear domain, traffic, latency, consistency, compliance, and operational requirements.
- Provides architecture guidance, not a complete production implementation.

## Best Practices

- Provide measurable traffic, latency, availability, consistency, retention, and compliance requirements.
- Describe current constraints, team skills, deployment environment, dependencies, and migration deadlines.
- Validate recommendations through threat modeling, load testing, failure testing, and incremental rollout.

## Anti Patterns

- Do not request microservices without explaining the domain boundaries or operational need.
- Do not accept technology choices without documented trade-offs and measurable requirements.
- Do not deploy generated designs without implementation review, testing, monitoring, and rollback preparation.

## Security Audit

- Audited at: 2026-08-14T09:35:09.394\+00:00
- Summary: Both static findings are false positives caused by harmless prose. The skill contains architecture guidance and no operational filesystem access or system reconnaissance behavior.

## Stats

- Views: 81
- Downloads: 14
- Favorites: 0
- Popularity score: 0