Codebase Design
Shared vocabulary for designing deep modules. Use when the user wants to design or improve a module's interface, find deepening opportunities, decide where a seam goes, make code more testable or AI-navigable, or when another skill needs the deep-module vocabulary.
Install
/plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skillsThe repo is a Claude Code plugin marketplace. Run /plugin afterwards to pick the plugin that includes this skill.
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill codebase-designgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git /tmp/skills
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/skills/skills/engineering/codebase-design ~/.claude/skills/codebase-designPersonal skills live in ~/.claude/skills. Use .claude/skills in a project folder to share a skill with your team.
From the SKILL.md
# Codebase Design Design **deep modules**: a lot of behaviour behind a small interface, placed at a clean seam, testable through that interface. Use this language and these principles wherever code is being designed or restructured. The aim is leverage for callers, locality for maintainers, and testability for everyone. ## Glossary Use these terms exactly: don't substitute "component," "service," "API," or "boundary." Consistent language is the whole point. **Module**: anything with an interface and an implementation. Deliberately scale-agnostic: a function, class, package, or tier-spanning slice. _Avoid_: unit, component, service. **Interface**: everything a caller must know to use the module correctly: the type signature, but also invariants, ordering constraints, error modes, required configuration, and performance characteristics. _Avoid_: API, signature (too narrow, they refer only to the type-level surface). **Implementation**: what's inside a module, its body of code. Distinct from **Adapter**: a thing can be a small adapter with a large implementation (a Postgres repo) or a large adapter with a small implementation (an in-memory fake). Reach for "adapter" when the seam is the topic; "implementation" otherwise.
Details
- Skill name
codebase-design- Repository
- mattpocock/skills
- Path
skills/engineering/codebase-design/SKILL.md- License
- MIT
- Repo updated
- 30 October 2026
- Listed in
- VoltAgent/awesome-agent-skills
FAQ
What does the Codebase Design skill do?
Shared vocabulary for designing deep modules. Use when the user wants to design or improve a module's interface, find deepening opportunities, decide where a seam goes, make code more testable or AI-navigable, or when another skill needs the deep-module vocabulary.
How do I install the Codebase Design skill?
Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills. Skills go in ~/.claude/skills (personal) or .claude/skills (project), and Claude loads them automatically when a task matches the description.
Is Codebase Design popular?
It lives in mattpocock/skills, which has 307,829 GitHub stars and 25,903 forks, and is included in 1 curated skill list.
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