System Design Prompts: From Load Calculations to Fault Tolerance — a Practical Prompt Pack

System design is the art of turning vague requirements into a blueprint that can handle millions of users, survive hardware failures, and stay within budget. Whether you're preparing for a system design interview at FAANG or actually building the next big SaaS, the ability to articulate and evaluate architectures is critical. But what if you could use AI as your brainstorming partner, critic, and calculator? This collection of prompts is designed to help you do exactly that: from initial requirements gathering to load estimation, database schema design, choosing between event-driven and CQRS, and ensuring fault tolerance. Each prompt is ready to copy-paste, with a real-world example and analysis of the output. Let's turn AI into your system design sparring partner.