addyosmani / addyosmani/agent-skills

[skill-gap] Proposal: `database-and-schema-design` — schema design, migrations, indexing discipline

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Description

I've been using agent-skills in a production project and hit what looks like the biggest remaining gap in the Build phase: there's `api-and-interface-design`, but nothing on schema design, data modeling, migration discipline, or indexing strategy. Almost every production app touches a database, and agents are notorious for writing sloppy migrations (irreversible changes, missing indexes on foreign keys, destructive column drops without expand/contract).

**Pre-flight checks done:**

- Catalog: no existing skill covers this. `api-and-interface-design` treats schema only as an input to API shape; `deprecation-and-migration` covers system/API deprecation strategy, not DB migration mechanics; `ci-cd-and-automation` runs migrations but doesn't teach writing them.
- Open PRs: no overlapping proposal.
- Issues: #378 asks to deepen the DB substance of `performance-optimization` — I'd draw the boundary as: modeling/schema/migrations in this skill, query tuning stays in performance-optimization, with cross-references instead of duplication.

**Proposed scope:** entity/relationship modeling and normalization trade-offs; migration discipline (reversible by default, expand/contract for destructive changes, rollback tested); indexing discipline (FKs, query-shape-driven, no speculative indexes); constraints as correctness tools.

**Verification gates:** migration runs both ways against realistic data; rollback tested; schema change reviewed against actual query patterns.

Happy to contribute the skill + eval cases as a PR if this direction sounds right.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named in the issue. Start by checking how `api-and-interface-design` and `deprecation-and-migration` are documented and linked in the project catalog and where their eval cases are defined. Then draft a sibling `database-and-schema-design` skill plus evaluation checks for reversible migrations and index discipline using the same format, and update catalog references; it is done when the new skill is added consistently and visible through the normal listing path.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
Half a day
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
54/100

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