Add Cloud Design Patterns skill for distributed systems architecture

[fatihdurgut]

Pull Request Checklist

• I have read and followed the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines.
• My contribution adds a new instruction, prompt, agent, skill, or workflow file in the correct directory.
• The file follows the required naming convention.
• The content is clearly structured and follows the example format.
• I have tested my instructions, prompt, agent, skill, or workflow with GitHub Copilot.
• I have run npm start and verified that README.md is up to date.

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Description

This PR adds a new skill for Cloud Design Patterns that provides comprehensive guidance on 42 industry-standard design patterns for distributed systems architecture.

The content is structured as a skill (rather than an instruction) so the agent can opt-in to using it on demand, avoiding unnecessary token consumption on every interaction. Pattern categories are split into separate reference files that the agent loads only when relevant.

Structure

skills/cloud-design-patterns/
├── SKILL.md                              # Overview + reference table
└── references/
    ├── reliability-resilience.md         # 9 patterns
    ├── performance.md                    # 10 patterns
    ├── messaging-integration.md          # 7 patterns
    ├── architecture-design.md            # 7 patterns
    ├── deployment-operational.md         # 5 patterns
    ├── security.md                       # 3 patterns
    ├── event-driven.md                   # 1 pattern
    ├── best-practices.md                 # Pattern selection guidance
    └── azure-service-mappings.md         # Azure service recommendations

Pattern Categories

• Reliability & Resilience (9 patterns) — Ambassador, Bulkhead, Circuit Breaker, Compensating Transaction, Retry, Health Endpoint Monitoring, Leader Election, Saga, Sequential Convoy
• Performance (10 patterns) — Async Request-Reply, Cache-Aside, CQRS, Index Table, Materialized View, Priority Queue, Queue-Based Load Leveling, Rate Limiting, Sharding, Throttling
• Messaging & Integration (7 patterns) — Choreography, Claim Check, Competing Consumers, Messaging Bridge, Pipes and Filters, Publisher-Subscriber, Scheduler Agent Supervisor
• Architecture & Design (7 patterns) — Anti-Corruption Layer, Backends for Frontends, Gateway Aggregation, Gateway Offloading, Gateway Routing, Sidecar, Strangler Fig
• Deployment & Operational (5 patterns) — Compute Resource Consolidation, Deployment Stamps, External Configuration Store, Geode, Static Content Hosting
• Security (3 patterns) — Federated Identity, Quarantine, Valet Key
• Event-Driven Architecture (1 pattern) — Event Sourcing

Each pattern includes problem statement, solution description, when-to-use guidance, and implementation considerations.

Content sourced from official Microsoft Learn documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/patterns/

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Type of Contribution

• New instruction file.
• New prompt file.
• New agent file.
• New plugin.
• New skill file.
• New agentic workflow.
• Update to existing instruction, prompt, agent, plugin, skill, or workflow.
• Other (please specify):

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Additional Notes

• Converted from instruction to skill based on reviewer feedback — skills are loaded on demand instead of injected into every interaction, preserving context window for direct contextual information.
• Pattern categories are split into separate reference files so the agent pulls in only the relevant subset.
• The skill is technology-agnostic and can be applied across Azure, other cloud platforms, on-premises setups, and hybrid environments.

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By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution abides by the Code of Conduct and will be licensed under the MIT License.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR adds a new instruction file that provides GitHub Copilot with comprehensive guidance on 42 industry-standard cloud design patterns for distributed systems architecture. The instruction file covers patterns organized into seven categories (Reliability & Resilience, Performance, Messaging & Integration, Architecture & Design, Deployment & Operational, Security, and Event-Driven Architecture), each with problem statement, solution, when-to-use guidance, and implementation considerations. The accompanying docs/README.instructions.md entry is updated to register the new instruction in the catalog.

Changes:

• New instructions/cloud-design-patterns.instructions.md instruction file covering 42 cloud design patterns across 7 categories
• Updated docs/README.instructions.md to register the new instruction with install badges in alphabetical order

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
instructions/cloud-design-patterns.instructions.md	New instruction file with front matter (description, applyTo) and content covering cloud design patterns
docs/README.instructions.md	Added catalog entry for the new instruction in the correct alphabetical position

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The only issue found is a minor discrepancy between the per-category pattern counts claimed in the PR description and the actual counts in the file (while the total of 42 is correct). This does not affect the quality or correctness of the instruction file itself.

[aaronpowell]

I'm not sure if an instructions file is the best choice for this, it might make more sense to be a skill for the agent to use.

Instructions are included on every interaction, so this will add a considerable number of tokens into them, reducing the amount of context window that can be used for direct contextual information.

Converting this to a skill would allow the agent to opt-in to using it as needed, and it could be also sliced up with references in the skill for the different parts so that the agent pulls in the expanded context on an as-needed basis.

[fatihdurgut]

Thanks for the feedback @aaronpowell! Great point about the token overhead — I've converted this from an instruction to a skill. The content is now split into a SKILL.md with a reference table pointing to 9 separate files (one per pattern category), so the agent only pulls in what's relevant. Appreciate the suggestion!

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.