Fundamental patterns for building maintainable, scalable systems: separation of concerns, distributed orchestration, and zero-downtime migration strategies.
Provides fundamental patterns for building maintainable, scalable systems. Use when designing components, migrating legacy systems, or scaling workflows with separation of concerns, hub-and-spoke orchestration, and zero-downtime strangler fig migrations.
/plugin marketplace add adaptive-enforcement-lab/claude-skills/plugin install patterns@ael-skillsThis skill inherits all available tools. When active, it can use any tool Claude has access to.
scripts/example-1.mermaidThese patterns govern how systems are structured and how components interact.
Implementation Guide
This guide is part of a modular documentation set. Refer to related guides for complete context.
See the full implementation guide in the source documentation.
Single-responsibility components with clear boundaries. Orchestration separate from execution. Testability through isolation.
Use when: Building CLIs, microservices, or any system with distinct responsibilities
Key benefit: Maintainability – change one thing without breaking everything
Centralized orchestration with distributed execution. One coordinator, many workers. Event-driven task distribution.
Use when: Scaling workflows, managing distributed systems, event-driven architectures
Key benefit: Scalability – add workers without changing orchestration
Incremental migration from legacy systems. Run old and new in parallel. Gradually shift traffic. Zero downtime transitions.
Use when: Replacing monoliths, migrating to new tech, risky system rewrites
Key benefit: Risk reduction – rollback at any point, validate in production
Separate discovery, execution, and reporting phases. Workflows that fail gracefully and report completely.
Use when: Building complex CI/CD workflows, multi-step automation
Key benefit: Observability – always know what happened, even on failure
Parallel processing of multiple targets. Dynamic matrices for scalability.
Use when: Processing many targets, scaling workflows, reducing execution time
Key benefit: Performance – parallel execution instead of sequential
flowchart TD
A[System Design] --> B[Separation of Concerns]
B --> C[Clear Boundaries]
C --> D[Hub and Spoke]
D --> E[Distributed Execution]
A --> F[Legacy Migration]
F --> G[Strangler Fig]
G --> B
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style A fill:#65d9ef,color:#1b1d1e
style B fill:#a7e22e,color:#1b1d1e
style C fill:#fd971e,color:#1b1d1e
style D fill:#9e6ffe,color:#1b1d1e
style E fill:#a7e22e,color:#1b1d1e
style F fill:#65d9ef,color:#1b1d1e
style G fill:#f92572,color:#1b1d1e
Separation of Concerns provides the foundation. Hub and Spoke scales it. Strangler Fig migrates to it.
These architectural patterns complement:
Build systems that scale, change, and survive.