What’s inside

One SKILL.md (the playbook) + one starter template. A preview:

Cobalt System Deck

When to use

• New hires or a new team need to understand how your product or platform works without reading a wiki for a week
• Stakeholders must approve a system — a platform, a workflow, an integration — and need to see how the parts fit before they sign off
• You're handing a system over to another team and the knowledge is currently in one person's head
• A partner or enterprise client asks "how does it actually work?" and a sales deck won't answer them
• Your architecture has drifted from the docs and nobody trusts the old diagram anymore

Workflow

1. Name the reader's question (input: who reads it, what they must decide or understand → output: one question the deck answers)
   A system deck answers one question: "How does X work, and what do I need to know to decide Y?" Write that question down. Everything in the deck serves it. If the reader is an executive, the question is about risk and cost; if a new engineer, about where things live and what breaks. Same system, different deck — the reader's question decides the depth.
2. Map the system (input: components, flows, inputs/outputs, rules → output: system map — boxes, arrows, labels)
   List the components (services, teams, tools, data stores), then the flows between them: what goes in, what comes out, who triggers what. Draw the map with one box per component and one labeled arrow per flow — "order created → payment checked → stock reserved" beats three unlabeled arrows. If a flow can't be labeled in one line, you don't understand it yet.
3. Draft the narrative (input: system map → output: slide outline — big picture → each part → flows → edge cases)
   Fixed spine: Overview map → One slide per major component (what it does, what it needs, what it produces) → Key flows end-to-end (one flow per slide) → Rules and limits → Failure modes → Changelog. The overview map appears first and returns as a thumbnail on later slides so the reader never gets lost inside one component.
4. Diagram in Cobalt System style (input: outline → output: styled deck — cobalt diagrams, silver labels, one diagram per slide)
   Cobalt System rules: deep cobalt boxes for components, silver-grey labels, one consistent arrow style, one diagram per slide, every box labeled with what it does — never a bare acronym. Same shapes mean the same things on every slide: if a cylinder is a data store on slide 2, it's a data store on slide 9. Legends go on the overview slide, not repeated.

Template preview

Cobalt System Deck — Template

Describe what IS. Planned components are marked "planned" and kept off the main map.

The reader's question

Reader: { } | Must decide / understand: { } Deck answers: "How does {system} work, and what do I need to know to {decision}?"

System map (overview slide)

Components (one box each):

Flows (one labeled arrow each):

Legend: {shape meanings — same shapes mean the same things on every slide}

Slide-by-slide draft

1. Overview map

{full map + legend} — version { } — {date} — owner: { }

2+. One slide per major component

{Component name}

• Does: { }
• Needs: { }
• Produces: { }

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