role-backend:microservices
Designs and implements microservices architectures including service decomposition, synchronous (REST/gRPC) and asynchronous (event-driven) communication, saga pattern, circuit breaker, service mesh (Istio), API gateway, service discovery, and distributed tracing. Use when decomposing monoliths, ...
SKILL.md
Full skill instructions
Microservices
When to use
- Evaluating whether microservices are the right architectural choice
- Decomposing a monolith into independently deployable services
- Designing inter-service communication (REST, gRPC, events, commands)
- Implementing distributed transactions with the saga pattern
- Adding circuit breakers, retries, or timeouts to outbound calls
- Configuring service discovery, API gateway, or a service mesh
- Setting up distributed tracing across service boundaries
Core principles
- Services own their data — no shared databases; communicate through APIs or events
- Design for failure — every remote call can and will fail; circuit breakers and retries are mandatory
- Events are immutable facts — past tense names, schema-versioned from day one
- Async by default — synchronous calls couple availability; use events where the caller does not need an immediate response
- Operational complexity is the cost — microservices without tracing, health checks, and a deployment pipeline are just distributed monoliths
Reference Files
references/decomposition-communication.md— when to use (and not use) microservices, decomposition strategies (business capability, DDD bounded contexts, strangler fig), synchronous vs asynchronous communication patterns, and the saga pattern (choreography vs orchestration)references/resilience-infrastructure.md— circuit breaker states and library options, API gateway responsibilities, service mesh trade-offs, service discovery approaches, distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry, retry/timeout strategy, and liveness/readiness health checks