Data Architecture Design Guide
A strategic skill for choosing between data lake/warehouse/lakehouse, modeling styles, medallion layers, table formats, and data mesh readiness.
Data & AnalyticsAdvanced★ 513⑂ 73AI score 8/10Last updated: Dec 11, 2025
What it does
Structures the strategic decisions behind modern cloud-native data platforms.
- Storage paradigm selection: lake vs warehouse vs lakehouse, weighed by use case, budget, and org size
- Modeling approach: decision tree across dimensional (Kimball), 3NF, Data Vault 2.0, and wide tables
- Open table formats: Iceberg vs Delta Lake vs Hudi, with Iceberg recommended for greenfield work
- Medallion architecture: Bronze→Silver→Gold responsibilities, quality gates per hop, and SQL patterns
- Data mesh readiness: six-factor 1–5 scoring with thresholds for centralized, hybrid, or mesh
- Modern stack & governance: ingestion/transformation/orchestration/BI tool picks plus catalog, lineage, quality, and access-control patterns
Who it's for
- Data architects designing a new platform or modernizing a legacy warehouse
- Platform engineers who must pick a tool stack and estimate monthly cost
- Data leaders who need a defensible answer on whether to adopt data mesh
- Analytics engineers standardizing layers in dbt, Snowflake, or Databricks
Example uses
- "50-person startup with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Stripe" → a simple warehouse plan on BigQuery + Airbyte + dbt under $1K/month
- "Plan our Oracle warehouse migration to the cloud" → incremental CDC migration into a medallion lakehouse with cost-savings estimates
- "200-person company, 5-person central data team — should we go data mesh?" → a "not yet" verdict from the six-factor score, plus a self-serve platform and governance roadmap
· · · Install guide · · ·
Try it now, no install
Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.
Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components/HEAD/skills/architecting-data/SKILL.md What I want: (describe your task here)
If Claude can't open the link, open it yourself and paste the contents instead.
↓ If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.
Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
- Download the ZIP with the button below.
- In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
- Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
Install in Claude Code
Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code
Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart. Copy the skills/architecting-data folder from the GitHub repo ancoleman/ai-design-components into my ~/.claude/skills/architecting-data/. When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.
Install with a command instead
git clone https://github.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components.git && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r ai-design-components/skills/architecting-data ~/.claude/skills/⚠ This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.
- Open a terminal and move to the folder where you keep repos.
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components.git - Create the skills folder if needed:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills - Copy the skill:
cp -r ai-design-components/skills/architecting-data ~/.claude/skills/ - Verify the
references/andexamples/subfolders came along:ls ~/.claude/skills/architecting-data - Restart Claude Code, then ask something like "design a lakehouse architecture for us" and the skill will be picked up automatically.
View source on GitHub ↗License: MIT