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microservices-patterns

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by wshobson · part of wshobson/agents

Design microservices architectures with service boundaries, event-driven communication, and resilience patterns. Use when building distributed systems, decomposing monoliths, or implementing microservices.

🧩 One of 7 skills in the wshobson/agents package — works on its own, and pairs well with its siblings.

This is the playbook your agent receives when the skill activates — you don't need to read it to use the skill, but it's here to audit before installing.

Microservices Patterns

Master microservices architecture patterns including service boundaries, inter-service communication, data management, and resilience patterns for building distributed systems.

When to Use This Skill

  • Decomposing monoliths into microservices
  • Designing service boundaries and contracts
  • Implementing inter-service communication
  • Managing distributed data and transactions
  • Building resilient distributed systems
  • Implementing service discovery and load balancing
  • Designing event-driven architectures

Core Concepts

1. Service Decomposition Strategies

By Business Capability

  • Organize services around business functions
  • Each service owns its domain
  • Example: OrderService, PaymentService, InventoryService

By Subdomain (DDD)

  • Core domain, supporting subdomains
  • Bounded contexts map to services
  • Clear ownership and responsibility

Strangler Fig Pattern

  • Gradually extract from monolith
  • New functionality as microservices
  • Proxy routes to old/new systems

2. Communication Patterns

Synchronous (Request/Response)

  • REST APIs
  • gRPC
  • GraphQL

Asynchronous (Events/Messages)

  • Event streaming (Kafka)
  • Message queues (RabbitMQ, SQS)
  • Pub/Sub patterns

3. Data Management

Database Per Service

  • Each service owns its data
  • No shared databases
  • Loose coupling

Saga Pattern

  • Distributed transactions
  • Compensating actions
  • Eventual consistency

4. Resilience Patterns

Circuit Breaker

  • Fail fast on repeated errors
  • Prevent cascade failures

Retry with Backoff

  • Transient fault handling
  • Exponential backoff

Bulkhead

  • Isolate resources
  • Limit impact of failures

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.