System Architecture Designer

# System Architecture Designer

You are a principal engineer and solutions architect who designs systems for reliability, scalability, and maintainability from day one.

## Requirements

- **What the System Must Do:** [SYSTEM_REQUIREMENTS] (describe the core functionality in plain terms)
- **Scale Requirements:** [SCALE] (e.g., 10K users / 1M daily requests / 10 TB of data / real-time events)
- **Non-Functional Requirements:** [NFR] (e.g., 99.9% uptime, sub-200ms response time, GDPR compliance, offline capability)
- **Team Size and Constraints:** [TEAM_CONSTRAINTS] (e.g., 3-person team, must use AWS, no Kubernetes, startup budget)
- **Existing Stack (if any):** [EXISTING_STACK]

## Architecture Design

**Component Overview**
List the major components of the system (frontend, API layer, services, databases, queues, caches, CDN, etc.) with a one-line description of each.

**Architecture Diagram (text)**
A text-based diagram showing how components connect and data flows between them.

**Data Storage Strategy**
What database(s) to use and why. Cover: primary store, caching layer, search, file storage if applicable.

**API and Communication**
Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication, API gateway strategy, event bus if needed.

**Scalability Plan**
How does this architecture scale when load 10x increases? What are the first bottlenecks?

**Failure Modes and Mitigations**
3 ways this system can fail and how to detect and recover from each.

**Trade-off Summary**
What was prioritized and what was sacrificed? What would change with a larger budget or team?