---
title: "design-review"
description: "A design review for complexity, with the principles and red flags of Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design. The skill fixes the frame, then asks the book's questions in order: which symptom and which cause, whethe"
canonical: https://agentpluginsdirectory.com/plugins/design-review
last-updated: 2026-09-25
---

# design-review
A design review for complexity, with the principles and red flags of Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design. The skill fixes the frame, then asks the book's questions in order: which symptom and which cause, whether each module is deep, which of the fourteen red flags fire, whether two pieces belong together, whether an error can be defined out of existence, and which findings matter by how often the part is touched. Every finding cites a chapter. For method length, comments and test-driven development the finding carries the other side from the written discussion between Ousterhout and Martin. For the book's other positions it says the position is the book's alone. The references beside the skill carry the book's two lists verbatim, the criteria, the positions and the sources. No script, no network, no credentials.
- Slug: design-review
- Publisher: Alexander Kurganov
- Repository: https://github.com/Akurganow/ai-plugins
- Manifest: plugins/design-review/plugin.json
- Version: 0.1.0
- License: MIT
- Category (editorial): other
- Skills: 1 (design-review)
- MCP servers: 0
- Stars: 1
- Repository created: 2026-08-22
- Repository last pushed: 2026-09-25
- Publisher type: User
- Listing: https://agentpluginsdirectory.com/plugins/design-review
- Schema: https://agent-plugins.org/schemas/1.0.0/plugin.schema.json

## What design-review does, in the publisher's words

A design review for complexity, with the principles and red flags of John Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design. It is for an engineer who reviews a module, an API, an architecture or a refactoring plan. One skill that turns the design into a ranked list of findings. Each finding carries the chapter it rests on, and the other side where the book is disputed in a text that was read.

Part of the ai-plugins marketplace. Installing: the per-client sections of the root README.

The skill fixes the frame first: what is reviewed, who reads it, who changes it, and how often. A user with one question starts at the step that answers it. Then it works through the book's questions in order.

From the project README, punctuation lightly normalized. Full text: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Akurganow/ai-plugins/HEAD/plugins/design-review/README.md

## Skills

- design-review: Review a software design for complexity, with the principles and red flags of Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design: module depth, information hiding, layers, error handling, comments and names. Use when reviewing a module, an API, an architecture or a refactoring plan. Use when an interface…

Descriptions come from the frontmatter of each SKILL.md, punctuation lightly normalized.