Design is the phase where decisions become expensive to reverse. APIs, schemas, and architecture shape the next six months. The skills here are about making those decisions deliberately, not by accident. Design is organized into sub-areas: `system-architecture`, `data-design`, `api-design`, and `observability-design`. Each sub-area has its own `index.md` describing its focus.
Guides stable API and interface design. Use when designing APIs, module boundaries, or any public interface. Use when creating REST or GraphQL endpoints, defining type contracts between modules, or establishing boundaries between frontend and backend.
Records decisions and documentation. Use when making architectural decisions, changing public APIs, shipping features, or when you need to record context that future engineers and agents will need to understand the codebase.
For teams who want AI-generated frontends to stop looking AI-generated. Pushes toward intentional typography, bold aesthetic direction, and production-grade code over generic defaults (Inter + purple gradient).
Builds production-quality UIs. Use when building or modifying user-facing interfaces. Use when creating components, implementing layouts, managing state, or when the output needs to look and feel production-quality rather than AI-generated.
For teams building on MongoDB. Covers anti-patterns, fundamentals, and 11 design patterns — the document-model guidance MongoDB's own team uses.