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PostgreSQL Table Design Guide

A reference skill that enforces PostgreSQL best practices for schema, data types, indexes, constraints, and partitioning.

Dev & CodingIntermediate★ 1,852⑂ 111AI score 9/10Last updated: Sep 25, 2026

What it does

  • Enforces data type rules when creating or altering tables: TEXT over VARCHAR(n), TIMESTAMPTZ over TIMESTAMP, NUMERIC for money, BIGINT GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY instead of serial.
  • Guides index strategy (B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN, partial, expression, covering) and constraints (PK, FK with explicit index, UNIQUE NULLS NOT DISTINCT, CHECK, EXCLUDE).
  • Flags PostgreSQL-specific gotchas: FK columns are not auto-indexed, sequence gaps are normal, MVCC dead tuples, identifier lowercasing, heap (non-clustered) storage.
  • Covers workload-specific design (update-heavy, insert-heavy, upsert), declarative partitioning, safe schema evolution/DDL, JSONB indexing patterns, and useful extensions (pg_trgm, pgvector, PostGIS, TimescaleDB).

Who it's for

  • Backend and data engineers working on PostgreSQL schemas and migrations
  • Teams standardizing schema reviews or ORM migration output
  • Anyone designing time-series/log tables that need partitioning and index tuning

Examples

  1. "Design users and orders tables" → DDL with IDENTITY PK, status CHECK constraint, and explicit FK indexes.
  2. "My JSONB query is slow" → advice on GIN jsonb_path_ops vs. a generated column with a B-tree index.
  3. "How should I shard a 100M-row log table?" → RANGE partitioning by time, BRIN index, retention strategy.

· · · 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/timescale/pg-aiguide/HEAD/skills/design-postgres-tables/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)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
↓ Download 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/design-postgres-tables folder from the GitHub repo timescale/pg-aiguide into my ~/.claude/skills/design-postgres-tables/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide.git /tmp/pg-aiguide && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r /tmp/pg-aiguide/skills/design-postgres-tables ~/.claude/skills/

⚠ This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Create the skills directory: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  3. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide.git /tmp/pg-aiguide
  4. Copy just this skill: cp -r /tmp/pg-aiguide/skills/design-postgres-tables ~/.claude/skills/
  5. Restart Claude Code and ask something like "design PostgreSQL tables for an orders system" to trigger it.
  6. (Optional) For project-only use, copy the folder into .claude/skills/ inside your repository instead.
View source on GitHub ↗License: Apache-2.0