A curated collection of resources on software design — with a focus on Domain-Driven Design, distributed systems architecture, and the craft of building well-structured, maintainable software.
This knowledge base is an Open Knowledge Format (OKF) v0.1 bundle: a tree of small Markdown concept cards, one per blog post. Each card has YAML frontmatter (type, title, resource, cluster, tags, published) and a short digest — ## Key Facts, ## Summary, ## Links, ## Related — that points to the original rather than copying it.
index.md # OKF navigation root (declares okf_version)
docs/ # bundle docs: schema.md, topics.md
<site>/
index.md # site intro + listing of its cards by cluster
_synthesis-*.md # one synthesis card per cluster (cross-post "Key Insights")
YYYY-MM-*.md # one concept card per post (sorts chronologically)
Start at index.md, or open any site folder. Each post has a cluster field naming its theme, and each cluster has a _synthesis-* card distilling the cross-cutting lessons. See docs/schema.md for the full card schema.
Automation for maintaining the bundle (all OKF-aware):
/askskill — query the cards in natural language (e.g./ask tech debt,/ask bounded contexts)./syncskill — detect new posts across tracked sources, write one card per post, and open a PR; safe to run unattended.web-resource-crawleragent — onboard a new site into concept cards organised by theme.
See CLAUDE.md for the card schema.
Integrity: scripts/validate_okf.py checks the bundle invariants — card frontmatter, resolvable links, and a strict 1:1 correspondence between concept cards and their index/synthesis listings. CI runs it on every push and PR (.github/workflows/validate-okf.yml); run it locally with python3 scripts/validate_okf.py.
This knowledge base exists thanks to practitioners who generously share their insights publicly. Thank you to Mathias Verraes, Dan North, Oskar Dudycz, and Armin Ronacher for writing openly about software design, architecture, and the craft of building better systems. Your willingness to document hard-won lessons, challenge conventional wisdom, and teach through real examples makes the entire field better.
| Author | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Mathias Verraes | DDD, Event Sourcing, CQRS, bounded contexts, messaging patterns, modelling theory, and software engineering practice |
| Dan North | BDD, agile delivery, testing, estimation, software design, learning models, and organizational effectiveness |
| Oskar Dudycz / Architecture Weekly | Event-driven architecture, distributed systems, PostgreSQL, Kafka internals, messaging patterns, observability, and pragmatic software engineering |
| Armin Ronacher | Flask/Werkzeug/WSGI web infrastructure, Rust, Python packaging and Unicode, open source economics, and first-hand agentic coding practice |