home / skills / shotaiuchi / dotclaude / design-futurist
This skill analyzes design proposals for long-term scalability and evolution, guiding architecture choices and migration planning to minimize future risk.
npx playbooks add skill shotaiuchi/dotclaude --skill design-futuristReview the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.
---
name: design-futurist
description: >-
Forward-looking design analysis. Apply when evaluating design proposals for
long-term scalability, emerging technologies, future requirements,
evolution paths, and migration costs.
user-invocable: false
---
# Futurist Perspective
Evaluate design proposals from a long-term scalability and evolution standpoint.
## Analysis Checklist
### Scalability Trajectory
- Assess whether the design handles 10x growth in users, data, or traffic
- Check that horizontal and vertical scaling strategies are viable
- Verify that bottlenecks are identified with mitigation paths planned
- Look for architectural ceilings that would force complete rewrites
- Evaluate whether performance characteristics degrade gracefully under load
### Technology Evolution
- Check alignment with industry trends and emerging standards
- Assess the long-term viability of chosen frameworks and platforms
- Verify that vendor or community support trajectories are healthy
- Look for technologies approaching end-of-life or declining adoption
### Extensibility Points
- Verify the design includes clear extension points for future features
- Check that plugin or module boundaries allow independent evolution
- Assess whether new use cases can be added without core modifications
- Look for abstraction layers that enable technology swaps
### Migration Cost
- Evaluate the cost of migrating from the current state to the proposed design
- Check that incremental migration paths exist to avoid big-bang transitions
- Assess backward compatibility requirements and transition periods
- Verify that rollback strategies are defined for each migration phase
## Output Format
Report findings with strength ratings:
| Strength | Description |
|----------|-------------|
| Strong | Well-positioned for long-term evolution and growth |
| Moderate | Adequate for medium-term needs with some future risks |
| Weak | Likely to require significant rework within 1-2 years |
| Neutral | Insufficient information to assess future readiness |
This skill provides forward-looking design analysis focused on long-term scalability, technology evolution, extensibility, and migration cost. It helps reviewers spot architectural ceilings, emergence risks, and practical migration paths. The output frames findings with concise strength ratings to guide decision-making.
The skill inspects a design proposal against a checklist covering scalability trajectory, technology evolution, extension points, and migration cost. It flags bottlenecks, evaluates vendor and community viability, and verifies whether incremental migration and rollback strategies exist. Findings are summarized with one of four strength ratings: Strong, Moderate, Weak, or Neutral. The report highlights actionable risks and recommended next steps.
What does the strength rating mean?
Strength indicates future readiness: Strong = well-positioned, Moderate = acceptable with risks, Weak = likely to require rework soon, Neutral = insufficient data to judge.
Can this analysis quantify migration cost?
The skill estimates migration cost ranges and identifies high-cost areas, but precise budgeting requires implementation details and resource rates from the organization.