distcompute

DistComputeSys2

A System2 overlay that injects distributed computing guidance into the System2 agent pipeline. Composed from three pillars:

1. Domain-Driven Design (DDD) — where to draw boundaries
2. Pike's 5 Rules of Programming — whether complexity is justified
3. The Reactive Manifesto — what properties boundaries must exhibit

Problem

LLMs (including Claude) bias toward transactional, database-centric architectures. They default to shared databases as integration layers, synchronous RPC everywhere, and monolithic designs that fail to scale. Naive correction produces the opposite problem: over-engineered distributed systems for systems that don't need them.

This overlay corrects both failure modes by injecting guidance at every stage of the System2 pipeline — from context framing through requirements, architecture, implementation, and code review.

Prerequisites

This is an overlay — it patches an existing System2 installation. System2 must be installed first.

What is System2?

System2 is a Claude Code plugin that provides a structured multi-agent engineering workflow with quality gates:

Scope → Context → Requirements → Design → Tasks → Implementation → Verification → Ship

It installs 13 specialized subagents (spec-coordinator, requirements-engineer, design-architect, executor, code-reviewer, etc.), validation hooks, file-access allowlists, and an orchestrator persona (CLAUDE.md). Each agent is a Markdown file with YAML frontmatter defining its tools, constraints, and system prompt.

Install System2 (if not already installed)

/plugin marketplace add jamesnordlund/System2
/plugin install system2@jamesnordlund-system2
/reload-plugins

Then initialize it in your target project:

/system2:init

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Installation

Step 1: Add the marketplace

/plugin marketplace add kwehden/DistComputeSys2

This registers the GitHub repo as a plugin source. Claude Code clones it and reads .claude-plugin/marketplace.json to discover available plugins.

Step 2: Install the plugin

/plugin install distcompute@kwehden-DistComputeSys2

This installs the skill and patch files to ~/.claude/plugins/cache/kwehden-DistComputeSys2/distcompute/1.0.0/.

Step 3: Reload plugins

/reload-plugins

This step is required. Claude Code caches the plugin registry at session start. After installing, you must reload for the new skill to become available. You'll see output like:

Reloaded: 4 plugins · 0 skills · 21 agents · 0 hooks · 1 plugin MCP server · 0 plugin LSP servers

Step 4: Apply the overlay

Navigate to your System2-enabled project and run:

/distcompute:apply

The skill locates your System2 agent files (checks the global plugin cache, plugin/agents/, and .claude/agents/), reads each patch, checks for sentinel text to avoid duplication, and injects the content at the documented insertion points.

Options:

Flag	Effect
--dry-run	Show what would change without writing files
--phase 1	Apply only Phase 1 (orchestrator + design-architect)
--phase 2	Apply only Phase 2 (spec-coordinator + requirements-engineer)
--phase 3	Apply only Phase 3 (code-reviewer + executor)

The skill is idempotent — running it again skips already-applied patches.

What gets patched

Phase	Target	What's Added
1a	CLAUDE.md (orchestrator)	Three-pillar operating principles
1b	design-architect.md	DDD constraints, bounded context sections, alternatives template, simplicity budget
2a	spec-coordinator.md	Domain/scale assessment step, new context.md sections, style requirements
2b	requirements-engineer.md	DDD + distributed guardrails, consistency & domain boundaries section
3a	code-reviewer.md	DDD checklist, surface-area delta items, future-change probes
3b	executor.md	Domain-driven implementation discipline section

Verifying Installation

grep "Domain-first boundaries" CLAUDE.md
grep "Bounded context identification" plugin/agents/design-architect.md
grep "Domain-Driven Design guardrails" plugin/agents/requirements-engineer.md
grep "Domain model integrity" plugin/agents/code-reviewer.md
grep "Domain-driven implementation discipline" plugin/agents/executor.md
grep "Domain Model Sketch" plugin/agents/spec-coordinator.md

If agents live in the global plugin cache (no local plugin/agents/), check:

grep "Bounded context identification" ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/system2-marketplace/plugin/agents/design-architect.md

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Graduated Adoption

You don't have to apply everything at once: