LN 71 System Design Baseline Builder

Creates a project baseline of architecture drivers and constraints. Use before design or planning; not for target design, plan review, implementation, or architecture audit.

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ln-71-system-design-baseline-builder

Creates a project baseline of architecture drivers and constraints. Use before design or planning; not for target design, plan review, implementation, or architecture audit.

System Design Baseline Builder

Goal: Create or update one durable source of truth for the project's architecture-driving requirements and constraints. Change only the approved architecture document; do not design the solution, review a plan, audit implementation, edit product code, or invent missing targets.

Execution contract: Treat the ordered checkbox workflow below as this skill's Definition of Done. Work through every item in order, and mark it complete only when its action and required evidence are complete. N/A, skipped, unavailable, or delegated items remain incomplete. Before returning, apply this skill's verdict and approval rules to every incomplete item and prepend Checklist: X/Y completeIncomplete: None | section/item — reason; outcome impact; exact next action; list every incomplete item.

Tool Routing

Need	Preferred capability	Fallback
Repository rules and document conventions	Native file reads plus focused search	User-provided convention with an explicit limitation
Existing requirements and architecture artifacts	Narrow repository search and direct reads	Conversation evidence marked with its source
Current workload or service evidence	Metrics, dashboards, logs, manifests, or checked-in reports	Mark `UNKNOWN`; never manufacture production numbers
Current external limits or standards	Official documentation or specifications	Mark the claim `UNVERIFIED`
Document mutation	Minimal patch to the approved Markdown artifact	Return `BLOCKED` if no safe writable path is authorized

Use external research only when a time-sensitive fact changes a constraint. Do not browse for values that must come from product owners, operators, the repository, or measured workload.

Artifact Rules

Prefer an existing unambiguous architecture-requirements document.
Otherwise use docs/architecture/system-design-baseline.md.
Read before writing, preserve unrelated content, and update facts in place instead of creating parallel truth.
Classify applicability separately as APPLICABLE or NOT_APPLICABLE, with evidence for exclusions.
Rank each applicable item as DRIVER, SUPPORTING, or INFORMATIONAL.
Classify evidence separately as CONFIRMED, ASSUMED, or UNKNOWN.
Record source, owner, confirmation date, and review trigger for each architecture driver.
Separate observed current values, required targets, hard limits, and future evolution triggers.
Use measurable quality-attribute scenarios; avoid words such as "fast", "scalable", or "secure" without a response measure.
Treat the baseline as versioned project knowledge, not an immutable promise.

Checklist

1. Establish Scope and Destination

Resolve the project, business outcome, intended readers, approved documentation scope, and language.
Read applicable repository instructions and inspect Git state so unrelated changes remain untouched.
Search for existing requirement, architecture, SLO, recovery, security, cost, and ownership documents.
Select one canonical artifact: reuse a clear equivalent or choose the default path; explain why no duplicate will be created.
Return BLOCKED if the destination is ambiguous and choosing one could split project truth.

2. Build the Evidence Ledger

Extract confirmed business goals, actors, critical journeys, scope, non-goals, and decision horizon.
Record sources for current workload, data volume, service behavior, platform limits, and existing commitments.
Separate repository facts from stakeholder choices and estimates.
Detect contradictions between documents, code, configuration, and stated requirements; preserve both claims until resolved.
Ask only for choices whose absence materially changes architecture; mark all other gaps UNKNOWN.

3. Define and Prioritize Architecture Drivers

Business and scope: Record actors, critical journeys, business horizon, scope, non-goals, and externally committed outcomes.
Demand and data scale: Record current and target users, rates, concurrency, payloads, growth, retention, and forecast horizon where relevant.
User-observable service quality: Define SLIs and SLOs for availability, latency, throughput, error rate, correctness, or freshness with measurement windows.
Data semantics and recovery: Define consistency, ordering, idempotency, reconciliation, durability, backup, RTO, RPO, and acceptable data loss at affected boundaries.
Security, privacy, and compliance: Define trust boundaries, data classification, residency, access, audit, and destructive-action constraints.
Operations and economics: Define ownership, operational capacity, cost envelope, supported regions, delivery cadence, and platform or vendor constraints.
Evolution: Record thresholds, business events, or evidence that justify revisiting an assumption, target, or deferred capability.
Separate applicability, criticality, and evidence status; do not use UNKNOWN to mean unimportant or NOT_APPLICABLE.
Prioritize the few scenarios most likely to shape architecture and express each as source/stimulus/environment/artifact/response/measure.

4. Write the Baseline

Create or update the artifact with: identity and status; business context; scope and non-goals; critical scenarios; workload and data; quality targets; recovery; consistency; security; cost and operations; constraints; assumptions and unknowns; review triggers.
Give every material parameter its theme, applicability, criticality, evidence status, value or range, source, owner, as-of date, and review trigger.
Keep calculations reproducible and label estimates separately from observed measurements.
Link shared architecture artifacts only by repository path or document title; never require a particular workflow or tool.
Preserve historical context needed to understand changed requirements instead of silently rewriting prior commitments.

5. Validate and Report

Re-read the written artifact and verify that no unknown was converted into a confident fact.
Check that targets are measurable, internally consistent, and proportionate to the evidenced business horizon.
Check that every architecture-critical gap has an owner or exact next evidence action.
Confirm no product code, tests, unrelated documents, or external systems changed.
Use READY only when the baseline is usable for decisions and no material unknown lacks a safe handling rule; use INCOMPLETE for a useful artifact with consequential open drivers; use BLOCKED when scope, authority, or destination prevents safe creation.

Output Contract

# System Design Baseline

**Verdict:** READY | INCOMPLETE | BLOCKED
**Artifact:** path

## Established drivers
- Prioritized architecture-driving scenarios
- Applicable business, demand, quality, data, security, operational, economic, and evolution constraints

## Driver register
| Theme | Parameter | Applicability | Criticality | Evidence status | Value or measure | Source and owner | Review trigger |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

## Changes made
- Created or updated sections
- Preserved conventions and related artifacts

## Residual risks
Only constraints that can still reverse an architecture decision.

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