---
id: wshobson/agents/microservices-patterns
version: "50efc3f2"
license: MIT
install: manual
updated: 2026-07-22
---

# microservices-patterns — Learn to architect microservices by decomposing monoliths, defining service boundaries, and choosing between synchronous and asynchronous communication. This skill covers data management strategies like the saga pattern and resilience techniques including circuit breakers and bulkheads to build fault-tolerant distributed systems.

Publisher: wshobson · Stars: 38308 · Updated: 2026-07-22

Install (manual): `git clone https://github.com/wshobson/agents`

## SKILL.md

# Microservices Patterns

Master microservices architecture patterns including service boundaries, inter-service communication, data management, and resilience patterns for building distributed systems.

## When to Use This Skill

- Decomposing monoliths into microservices
- Designing service boundaries and contracts
- Implementing inter-service communication
- Managing distributed data and transactions
- Building resilient distributed systems
- Implementing service discovery and load balancing
- Designing event-driven architectures

## Core Concepts

### 1. Service Decomposition Strategies

**By Business Capability**

- Organize services around business functions
- Each service owns its domain
- Example: OrderService, PaymentService, InventoryService

**By Subdomain (DDD)**

- Core domain, supporting subdomains
- Bounded contexts map to services
- Clear ownership and responsibility

**Strangler Fig Pattern**

- Gradually extract from monolith
- New functionality as microservices
- Proxy routes to old/new systems

### 2. Communication Patterns

**Synchronous (Request/Response)**

- REST APIs
- gRPC
- GraphQL

**Asynchronous (Events/Messages)**

- Event streaming (Kafka)
- Message queues (RabbitMQ, SQS)
- Pub/Sub patterns

### 3. Data Management

**Database Per Service**

- Each service owns its data
- No shared databases
- Loose coupling

**Saga Pattern**

- Distributed transactions
- Compensating actions
- Eventual consistency

### 4. Resilience Patterns

**Circuit Breaker**

- Fail fast on repeated errors
- Prevent cascade failures

**Retry with Backoff**

- Transient fault handling
- Exponential backoff

**Bulkhead**

- Isolate resources
- Limit impact of failures

## Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in `references/details.md`. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.



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