How to use: 9 categories, 72 items total. For each item, write your project's answer in 1-2 sentences. Items left ambiguous now will always come back as "wait, why did we decide that?" later.

Inputs are auto-saved to your browser's localStorage, so they survive page reloads. For the reasoning behind each item, follow the link to its dedicated article.

Architecture Crash Course for the Generative-AI Era Why architecture knowledge is the strongest weapon in the generative-AI era. A TOC-style guide to who this 80+ article series is for, how the categories.

System Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Application form Native / Web / Hybrid
Deployment model Cloud / On-prem / Hybrid
Cloud vendor AWS / GCP / Azure / Multi
Runtime VM / Container / Serverless
Datastore RDB / NoSQL / Mixed
Network design VPC / Subnets / Connectivity
Monitoring foundation Tooling and alerting policy
BCP policy RTO / RPO / Redundancy level
System Architecture Overview — The Skeleton You Decide First System architecture is the layer that binds hardware, software, and network into a single skeleton. Why it has to be decided first, what to decide.

Software Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Overall structure Monolith / Microservices / Modular monolith
Module design Layered / DDD / Hexagonal
Programming language TypeScript / Java / Python / Go / Rust ...
Framework Next.js / Spring / .NET / Django ...
API style REST / GraphQL / gRPC / WebSocket
Transaction design ACID / Eventual / Saga
Error handling Exceptions / Result type / Circuit Breaker
Session management Cookie / JWT / Refresh Token
Software Architecture Overview The big picture of software architecture. The three patterns of monolith / modular monolith / microservices, recommended structure by scale, and the.

Application Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Class structure Single responsibility / Inheritance / Composition
Domain logic Transaction Script / Rich Domain (DDD)
Error handling policy Exceptions / Result type / Error boundary
Naming and conceptual model Ubiquitous language / Glossary upkeep
Directory layout Feature-based / Layer-based
Dependency direction No cycles / Clean Architecture
Test strategy Unit / Integration / E2E balance
Validation design Which layer / How to reuse
Application Architecture Overview — The Internal Rules The big picture of application architecture. How it differs from software architecture, and how to decide the internal rules.

Frontend Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Hosting CDN / Edge compute
Rendering MPA / SPA / SSR / SSG / ISR
State management Context / Redux / Zustand / Jotai
CSS CSS Modules / Tailwind / CSS-in-JS
Framework React / Vue / Angular / Svelte
BFF GraphQL / REST / tRPC
Routing File-based / Config-based
Performance targets LCP / INP / CLS goals
Frontend Architecture Overview — The Only Layer Users Touch Why frontend deserves to be its own architecture. Rendering taxonomy, major frameworks, a page-type × configuration ladder, and the AI-era selection.

Data Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Operational DB (OLTP) PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQL Server
Analytical DWH (OLAP) Snowflake / BigQuery / Redshift
Data lake S3 / ADLS / GCS
Cache Redis / Memcached
Vector DB pgvector / Pinecone / Weaviate
ETL/ELT tools dbt / Airflow / Dataflow
Streaming platform Kafka / Kinesis / Pub/Sub
Data governance Catalog / MDM / Access controls
Data Architecture: The Foundation for AI in Your Org OLTP / OLAP separation, the right storage per data type, a data-volume × freshness ladder, and why data tidiness sets the upper limit of AI utilization.

Security Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Authentication Password+MFA / Passkey / SSO / SAML / OIDC
Auth platform In-house / Auth0 / Clerk / Cognito / Entra ID
Authorization model RBAC / ABAC / ReBAC / OPA
Session approach Cookie / JWT / Refresh Token
Transport encryption TLS 1.3 / mTLS
At-rest encryption AES-256 / KMS / HSM
Network isolation VPC / Subnets / Security groups
Audit log retention Retention period and tamper protection
Security Architecture: Defense in Depth and Zero Trust CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability), the major domains of authentication / authorization / encryption / network / secrets management, the.

DevOps Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Git hosting GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket
Branching strategy GitHub Flow / Trunk Based / GitFlow
CI/CD GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / CircleCI
Test pyramid Unit / Integration / E2E ratio
Monitoring tools Prometheus / Datadog / New Relic
Logging CloudWatch Logs / Loki / Splunk
SLO/SLI definition Availability / p99 latency
Deployment strategy Blue-Green / Canary / Rolling
DevOps Architecture: One Pipeline for Build and Ship DevOps and SRE handled together as one lifecycle. The DORA four metrics, SLO + error budget, AI-era machine-readable operational data.

Enterprise Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Business capability map 5-layer / 7-layer hierarchy
Data governance CDO role / Data stewards
Master Data Management (MDM) Centralized / Federated
System standards Shared auth / Shared notification / Shared ID
Application portfolio Buy / Build / Subscribe
Cloud strategy Cloud First / Hybrid / On-prem
EA framework TOGAF / Zachman / FEA / DoDAF
AS-IS / TO-BE plan Mid-term plan (3-5 years)
Enterprise Architecture Overview The BA/DA/AA/TA four-layer model, AS-IS/TO-BE, the TOGAF framework, granularity by company size, and the structural reason DA becomes the core of.

Solution Architecture

0 / 8 items decided

Item Example options Your answer Done
Problem to solve Operational efficiency / New business / Cost reduction
Scope Minimal / Full feature set
Target users Internal / Customers / External partners
Scale 10 / 1k / 1M users
Buy / Build / Subscribe Off-the-shelf / In-house / SaaS
Non-functional requirements Performance / Availability / Security
ROI estimate 3-year payback / Payback line
PoC Go/No-Go criteria Duration and evaluation metrics
Solution Architecture Overview The big picture of solution architecture, focused on per-project problem solving. 3-option comparison, NFRs, ROI, PoCs, and the AI-era role shift.
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