system-design-interviewer
Pressure-test a system design or run a mock system-design interview. Use to evaluate a proposed architecture for scale, reliability, and trade-offs, or to practice interviews with structured feedback.
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- skills-hub.ai distributor
- Method
- Distributor-signed by skills-hub.aiCryptographically signed by the skills-hub.ai distributor key at publish time.
- Signed
Install this skill
Run this command in your terminal. No account required — it auto-detects your AI tool and installs the skill file.
npx @skills-hub-ai/cli install system-design-interviewerSetup by platform
GitHub Copilot
.github/copilot-instructions.md (project-level), paste skill content into instructions
Setup guide →Install
One-click setup for your editorRun in your project root
npx @skills-hub-ai/cli install system-design-interviewer --target claude-codeExamples
Prompt
Can you design a scalable URL shortening service for 10 million daily users?Output
Interviewer mode:
| Dimension | Score |
| --- | --- |
| Requirements clarification | 4 |
| Estimation | 4 |
| High-level design | 4 |
| Depth | 3 |
| Trade-offs | 3 |
| Reliability/ops | 3 |
| Communication | 4 |
To improve, clarify the read/write ratio, specify latency targets, and discuss hot-key mitigation strategies. Also, include more detailed failure scenarios, especially for cache invalidation and database partitioning. Finally, justify the choice of URL ID encoding scheme and its impact on storage and lookup speed.Prompt
Evaluate a proposed architecture for a real-time chat application supporting 100k concurrent users.Output
Critic mode:
- Critical risk: Single Redis cache for message storage could be a bottleneck and a single point of failure. Recommend implementing multiple cache nodes with sharding.
- High risk: The database choice (e.g., MongoDB) may not handle high write throughput under peak load. Consider a KV store or time-series optimized database.
- Medium risk: Asynchronous message delivery may cause delays; need to specify SLAs and fallback mechanisms.
- Low risk: The system handles user presence via WebSocket keep-alives; ensure proper reconnection logic.
Biggest bottleneck at 10× scale: the message broker throughput. When traffic spikes, the system may experience message delays or loss. To address this, plan for horizontal scaling of the message queue and implement backpressure mechanisms.Instructions
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Browse category →Frequently asked questions about system-design-interviewer
What does the system-design-interviewer skill do?
Pressure-test a system design or run a mock system-design interview. Use to evaluate a proposed architecture for scale, reliability, and trade-offs, or to practice interviews with structured feedback. It's a reusable SKILL.md instruction set that loads into your AI coding assistant on demand, no prompt engineering, no copy-pasting every session.
How do I install the system-design-interviewer skill?
Run `npx @skills-hub-ai/cli install system-design-interviewer` from your terminal. The CLI writes the SKILL.md to the correct location for your AI tool (e.g. ~/.claude/skills/system-design-interviewer/ for Claude Code or ~/.cursor/skills/ for Cursor with --target cursor) and adds it to your project's .skills.json lockfile.
Which AI tools does system-design-interviewer work with?
system-design-interviewer runs in Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Cline, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI. It follows the open Agent Skills standard (SKILL.md), so the same skill works in every supported tool without modification.
Is the system-design-interviewer skill free?
Yes. Every skill on skills-hub.ai is free and open-source. There are no premium tiers, paywalls, or usage limits. You only pay for whatever AI assistant you're already using.
How do I use system-design-interviewer after installing it?
In Claude Code, type `/system-design-interviewer` (or whatever slash command the skill registers) and the AI follows the skill's instructions immediately. You can also reference it by name in natural language, your AI loads the skill into context when relevant.
Can I share the system-design-interviewer skill with my team?
Yes. Commit your project's .skills.json lockfile and teammates run `npx @skills-hub-ai/cli install` (no args) to install every skill at the exact version you pinned. Organization-scoped installs work via skills-hub.ai organizations.