Microservices Architect

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Splitting a monolith into services along bounded contexts
• Choosing between REST, gRPC and event-driven messaging for a service call
• Planning data ownership, event sourcing or saga flows across services
• Adding timeouts, retries and circuit breakers to service calls
• Setting up correlation IDs and distributed tracing

Example prompts

• “Propose service boundaries for our e-commerce monolith using bounded contexts.”
• “Decide which of these order flows should be async events and which can stay synchronous.”
• “Design a saga for checkout that spans the payment, inventory and shipping services.”
• “Add correlation ID middleware to the Express gateway and pass the ID on to downstream calls.”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Domain Analysis — Apply DDD to identify bounded contexts and service boundaries.
2. 2Communication Design — Choose sync/async patterns and protocols (REST, gRPC, events).
3. 3Data Strategy — Database per service, event sourcing, eventual consistency.
4. 4Resilience — Circuit breakers, retries, timeouts, bulkheads, fallbacks.
5. 5Observability — Distributed tracing, correlation IDs, centralized logging.
6. 6Deployment — Container orchestration, service mesh, progressive delivery.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1be15d8. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are javascript, python, typescript and yaml).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • github.com
  • synergetic.solutions
  • jeffallan.github.io

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Microservices Architect loads about 1.8k tokens when it runs, and up to ~18k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 108 tokens; SKILL.md has 448 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~108

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.8k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~18k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Jeffallan/claude-skills at commit 1be15d8, republished under its MIT licence (© Jeffallan). 448 words, ~1,764 tokens.

name

microservices-architect

description

Designs distributed system architectures, decomposes monoliths into bounded-context services, recommends communication patterns, and produces service boundary diagrams and resilience strategies. Use when designing distributed systems, decomposing monoliths, or implementing microservices patterns — including service boundaries, DDD, saga patterns, event sourcing, CQRS, service mesh, or distributed tracing.

license

MIT

metadata.author

https://github.com/Jeffallan

metadata.company

https://synergetic.solutions

metadata.version

1.1.0

metadata.domain

api-architecture

metadata.triggers

microservices, service mesh, distributed systems, service boundaries, domain-driven design, event sourcing, CQRS, saga pattern, Kubernetes microservices…

metadata.role

architect

metadata.scope

system-design

metadata.output-format

architecture

metadata.related-skills

devops-engineer, kubernetes-specialist, graphql-architect, architecture-designer, monitoring-expert

const { v4: uuidv4 } = require('uuid');

function correlationMiddleware(req, res, next) {
  req.correlationId = req.headers['x-correlation-id'] || uuidv4();
  res.setHeader('x-correlation-id', req.correlationId);
  // Attach to logger context so every log line includes the ID
  req.log = logger.child({ correlationId: req.correlationId });
  next();
}

import pybreaker

# Opens after 5 failures; resets after 30 s in half-open state
breaker = pybreaker.CircuitBreaker(fail_max=5, reset_timeout=30)

@breaker
def call_inventory_service(order_id: str):
    response = requests.get(f"{INVENTORY_URL}/stock/{order_id}", timeout=2)
    response.raise_for_status()
    return response.json()

def get_inventory(order_id: str):
    try:
        return call_inventory_service(order_id)
    except pybreaker.CircuitBreakerError:
        return {"status": "unavailable", "fallback": True}

// Each step defines execute() and compensate() so rollback is automatic.
interface SagaStep<T> {
  execute(ctx: T): Promise<T>;
  compensate(ctx: T): Promise<void>;
}

async function runSaga<T>(steps: SagaStep<T>[], initialCtx: T): Promise<T> {
  const completed: SagaStep<T>[] = [];
  let ctx = initialCtx;
  for (const step of steps) {
    try {
      ctx = await step.execute(ctx);
      completed.push(step);
    } catch (err) {
      for (const done of completed.reverse()) {
        await done.compensate(ctx).catch(console.error);
      }
      throw err;
    }
  }
  return ctx;
}

// Usage: order creation saga
const orderSaga = [reserveInventoryStep, chargePaymentStep, scheduleShipmentStep];
await runSaga(orderSaga, { orderId, customerId, items });

livenessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /health/live
    port: 8080
  initialDelaySeconds: 10
  periodSeconds: 15
readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /health/ready
    port: 8080
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

© Jeffallan, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 5 other files (references) in skills/microservices-architect of Jeffallan/claude-skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/communication.md
• references/data.md
• references/decomposition.md
• references/observability.md
• references/patterns.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1be15d8