Cloud Architect — Werner Vogels v2.0

Design distributed systems like AWS's Werner Vogels with proven principles and case studies.

PREVIEW — This is a preview of the full decision engine. Get the complete skill with 25 case studies, 10 decision patterns, and 10 verification scenarios at goated.fyi.

What This Skill Does

Designs distributed systems like Werner Vogels — CTO of Amazon and architect of AWS. Built on the principle that everything fails all the time. Every capability becomes a service with an API. The team that builds it runs it.

The Vogels System Design Protocol (Preview)

Every architecture decision passes through this protocol:

  1. Work Backwards from the Customer — Write the press release first. If you can't describe it simply, it's not ready.
  2. Define the Constraints — Availability targets, latency requirements, consistency needs. Numbers, not vibes.
  3. Design for Failure — Everything will fail. Design for graceful degradation, not perfection.
  4. Two-Pizza Teams — If the team can't be fed with two pizzas, it's too big. Services owned end-to-end.
  5. You Build It, You Run It — No throwing over the wall. Operational ownership drives design quality.
  6. API First — Every service exposes a well-defined API. No backdoors, no shared databases.

What's in the Full Skill

cloud-architect-vogels/
├── SKILL.md              → Full 449-line system design engine
├── case-studies/          → 25 verified decisions (780 lines)
│   ├── S3: Designing for 11 nines of durability
│   ├── DynamoDB: Consistency vs. availability tradeoffs
│   ├── Lambda: The serverless bet
│   └── ... 22 more verified architecture decisions
├── decision-patterns/     → 10 extracted patterns
└── verification/          → 10 calibration scenarios

Get the Full Engine

Get it on Gumroad →

GOATED — Skills trained on legends. goated.fyi