Topics / #system-design

System-design projects on GitHub

Designing large-scale systems: architecture tradeoffs for interviews and production.

As of , the most-starred System-design projects on GitHub are system-design-primer (374.5K stars), developer-roadmap (369.6K stars) and coding-interview-university (362.6K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 60 System-design repositories with 2.9M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 16 was archify, with +396 stars in a day.

60Projects
2.9MStars in total
+1.3KStars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/system-design ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 16

+396

archify

tt-a1i/archify · ★ 84.6K

Archify is an agent skill that turns a codebase, system description, or plan into a polished, interactive diagram (architecture, workflow, sequence, data flow, or lifecycle) directly inside a coding agent's chat.

+161

awesome-system-design-resources

ashishps1/awesome-system-design-resources · ★ 42.4K

A free, curated collection of System Design resources: core concepts, networking and API fundamentals, database and caching basics, distributed systems patterns, and a huge list of interview problems, books, courses, and papers — all aimed at prepping for System Design interviews.

+116

system-design-primer

donnemartin/system-design-primer · ★ 374.5K

A curated, organized collection of resources for learning how to design large-scale systems, built specifically to help engineers prepare for system design interviews.

+112

developer-roadmap

nilbuild/developer-roadmap · ★ 369.6K

Community-driven roadmaps, guides and resources that show developers what to learn next and in what order — from frontend and backend to AI, DevOps and dozens of other paths.

The all-time top

60 projects · by stars

  1. #1 · donnemartin/system-design-primer

    system-design-primer

    A curated, organized collection of resources for learning how to design large-scale systems, built specifically to help engineers prepare for system design interviews.

    374.5K
  2. #2 · nilbuild/developer-roadmap

    developer-roadmap

    Community-driven roadmaps, guides and resources that show developers what to learn next and in what order — from frontend and backend to AI, DevOps and dozens of other paths.

    369.6K
  3. #3 · jwasham/coding-interview-university

    coding-interview-university

    It is a multi-month self-study plan covering the computer science topics you need to pass a software engineering interview at a large company.

    362.6K
  1. 4

    CS-Notes

    186.3KCyC2018/CS-Notes

    CS-Notes is a huge Chinese-language collection of study notes covering the core topics of technical coding interviews: algorithms, LeetCode solutions, operating systems, computer networks, databases, Java, and system design.

  2. 5

    JavaGuide

    159.1KSnailclimb/JavaGuide · JavaScript

    JavaGuide is a free, open-source guide to Java and backend interviews: a collection of study notes and Q&A summaries covering Java core, computer science fundamentals, databases, and system design.

  3. 6

    tech-interview-handbook

    143Kyangshun/tech-interview-handbook · TypeScript

    A free, curated collection of technical interview preparation materials for software engineers, created by the author of Blind 75, covering algorithms, behavioral questions, resumes, and more.

  4. 7

    system-design-101

    90.5KByteByteGoHq/system-design-101

    A free, visual collection of short explainers and cheat sheets covering core system design concepts (APIs, databases, caching, message queues, real-world company architectures) to help you understand how production systems work and prepare for system design interviews.

  5. 8

    archify

    84.6Ktt-a1i/archify · JavaScript

    Archify is an agent skill that turns a codebase, system description, or plan into a polished, interactive diagram (architecture, workflow, sequence, data flow, or lifecycle) directly inside a coding agent's chat.

  6. 9

    advanced-java

    79.2Kdoocs/advanced-java · Java

    A free, community-curated collection of in-depth Java backend interview questions and answers, covering message queues, search engines, caching, sharding, distributed systems, high availability, microservices, and big-data processing.

  7. 10

    awesome-scalability

    74.8Kbinhnguyennus/awesome-scalability

    A curated, continuously updated reading list of articles, case studies, and talks from engineers at companies like Netflix, Uber, Facebook, and Amazon, showing concrete patterns for building scalable, reliable, and performant large-scale systems.

  8. 11

    architect-awesome

    60.8Kxingshaocheng/architect-awesome

    A curated technical roadmap in Chinese for backend engineers aiming to become architects, mapping out data structures, algorithms, concurrency, databases, middleware, and system design.

  9. 12

    professional-programming

    51.6Kcharlax/professional-programming · Python

    It's a curated collection of learning resources (articles, books, talks, papers) meant to make software engineers more well-rounded professionals, covering everything from algorithms to career growth to system architecture.

  10. 13

    awesome-design-patterns

    49.4KDovAmir/awesome-design-patterns

    A curated list of links to resources about software and architecture design patterns, covering everything from language-specific patterns to cloud, serverless, microservices, IoT, big data, ML, databases, DevOps, mobile, front-end and security.

  11. 14

    system-design

    46.6Kkaranpratapsingh/system-design

    It is a free course and ebook that teaches how to design large-scale systems and prepares readers for system design interviews.

  12. 15

    front-end-interview-handbook

    44Kyangshun/front-end-interview-handbook · JavaScript

    A curated collection of front end interview preparation materials, covering interview formats, front end system design, trivia, JavaScript/DOM/algorithm questions, and company-specific question sets.

  13. 16

    diagrams

    42.7Kmingrammer/diagrams · Python

    Diagrams is a Python library that draws cloud system architecture as code: you describe your AWS, Azure, GCP or Kubernetes setup in Python and get a rendered diagram. It was built for prototyping architecture designs without design tools.

  14. 17

    awesome-system-design-resources

    42.4Kashishps1/awesome-system-design-resources · Java

    A free, curated collection of System Design resources: core concepts, networking and API fundamentals, database and caching basics, distributed systems patterns, and a huge list of interview problems, books, courses, and papers — all aimed at prepping for System Design interviews.

  15. 18

    interview_internal_reference

    37.3K0voice/interview_internal_reference · Python

    A curated collection of real technical interview questions and answers from major Chinese tech companies — Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, ByteDance and more — with analysis from expert interviewers.

  16. 19

    JavaFamily

    37KAobingJava/JavaFamily

    A massive Chinese-language study guide and interview prep collection for Java developers, covering core computer science, Java internals, frameworks, databases, distributed systems, and real interview questions from major Chinese tech companies.

  17. 20

    system-design-academy

    29.4Ksystemdesign42/system-design-academy

    A curated collection of system design case studies, fundamentals, interview prep, and AI engineering resources, organized as a big reference list tied to a newsletter.

  18. 21

    awesome-low-level-design

    27.4Kashishps1/awesome-low-level-design · Java

    A curated collection of free resources for learning Low Level Design (LLD) / Object-Oriented Design and preparing for LLD interview rounds.

  19. 22

    JCSprout

    26.8KcrossoverJie/JCSprout · Java

    JCSprout ('Java Core Sprout') is a Chinese-language knowledge base of core Java topics: a curated collection of articles on collections, multithreading, JVM internals, distributed systems, frameworks, algorithms and Netty, with over 26k GitHub stars.

  20. 23

    12-factor-agents

    26.7Khumanlayer/12-factor-agents · TypeScript

    A written guide of 12 (plus a bonus 13th) engineering principles for building LLM-powered agent software reliable enough for production customers, distilled from the author's experience at HumanLayer and conversations with many SaaS founders.

  21. 24

    miaosha

    26.6Kqiurunze123/miaosha · Java

    This is a Chinese learning repository about designing and building a high-concurrency 'flash sale' (seckill) system for internet engineers, combining iterative demo projects, small frameworks, study notes and diagrams covering distributed-systems topics.

  22. 25

    system-design-notes

    26.6Kliquidslr/system-design-notes

    A set of study notes summarizing the 'System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide' books (Volumes 1 and 2), covering common system design interview topics chapter by chapter.

  23. 26

    system-design-interview

    23.9Kcheckcheckzz/system-design-interview

    A curated guide for preparing system design interviews at IT companies, covering interview tips, basic system design knowledge, engineering blogs, real-world architectures, and common design questions with reference material.

  24. 27

    ddia

    23.8KVonng/ddia · Python

    A free Chinese translation of Martin Kleppmann's 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications' (DDIA), covering both the 1st and the complete 2nd edition; 210 contributors have polished it since 2018.

  25. 28

    architecture.of.internet-product

    20.8Kdavideuler/architecture.of.internet-product · HTML

    This is a curated Chinese-language collection of real-world technical architecture documents from major internet companies — WeChat/Tencent, Taobao/Alibaba, Meituan-Dianping, Baidu, Qihoo 360, and global players like OpenAI, Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay.

  26. 29

    system-design-resources

    18.5KInterviewReady/system-design-resources

    A curated collection of the best System Design resources on the Internet — one README that organizes engineering writeups, papers and talks into a topic-by-topic reading list.

  27. 30

    interview

    18.4KOlshansk/interview

    A curated collection of links — books, courses, articles, question banks, mock-interview services, and videos — meant to help you prepare for a technical interview, especially at companies like Google and Facebook.

  28. 31

    path-to-senior-engineer-handbook

    18.4Kjordan-cutler/path-to-senior-engineer-handbook

    A curated handbook of external resources (newsletters, books, courses, papers, videos, podcasts, communities, and job/interview platforms) aimed at helping software engineers grow into Senior Engineer and beyond.

  29. 32

    gitdiagram

    18.3Kahmedkhaleel2004/gitdiagram · TypeScript

    GitDiagram turns any public or private GitHub repository into an interactive architecture diagram in seconds. You can also replace 'hub' with 'diagram' in any GitHub URL to open its diagram.

  30. 33

    how-web-works

    16.8Kvasanthk/how-web-works

    A detailed walkthrough of everything that happens behind the scenes between typing 'google.com' into a browser and the page rendering on screen, covering keyboard input, URL parsing, DNS, TLS, HTTP, and browser rendering internals.

  31. 34

    xg2xg

    15.7Kjhuangtw/xg2xg

    A cheatsheet-style lookup table mapping Google internal technologies and services to their open source, cloud or SaaS equivalents, built by an ex-Googler to help ex-Googlers survive the real world.

  32. 35

    awesome-programming-books

    15.6Kjobbole/awesome-programming-books

    It is a curated Chinese-language list of 100+ classic programming books, covering computer systems and networking, architecture, algorithms and data structures, frontend, backend, mobile, databases, testing, project management, and career/interview preparation.

  33. 36

    domain-driven-hexagon

    15KSairyss/domain-driven-hexagon · TypeScript

    A learning resource that documents how to design backend software using Domain-Driven Design, Hexagonal/Clean/Onion Architecture and SOLID principles, with runnable TypeScript/NestJS code examples illustrating every pattern.

  34. 37

    technology-talk

    14.7Kaalansehaiyang/technology-talk

    A curated Chinese knowledge base of Java interview prep articles, system architecture notes, middleware deep-dives, and career advice, written by a self-described Alibaba P7 architect who goes by 'Tom哥'.

  35. 38

    Halfrost-Field

    13.2Khalfrost/Halfrost-Field · Go

    Halfrost-Field is a personal technical blog archive by halfrost containing long-form deep-dive articles on source code analysis, system design, and engineering topics such as Go internals, vLLM/LLM serving, machine learning notes, and network protocols.

  36. 39

    machine-learning-interview

    12.8Kkhangich/machine-learning-interview

    A curated study guide and resource collection for machine learning interviews at FAANG-level companies, written by someone who received offers from Google, LinkedIn, Snap, Coupang and StitchFix.

  37. 40

    awesome-system-design

    12.6Kmadd86/awesome-system-design

    A curated list of articles, books, videos, and tools for learning System Design (distributed systems), useful both for interview prep and for designing real distributed/microservice applications.

  38. 41

    awesome-ddd

    12.4Kheynickc/awesome-ddd

    A curated list of resources for Domain-Driven Design (DDD), CQRS, Event Sourcing, and Event Storming, covering books, free ebooks, training courses, video collections, sample projects, libraries/frameworks, podcasts, conferences, and tools.

  39. 42

    android-interview-questions

    12.4Kamitshekhariitbhu/android-interview-questions · Java

    A large curated collection of Android interview questions and answers, covering Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines, Kotlin Flow, Android fundamentals, architecture, design patterns, system design, unit testing, and Java.

  40. 43

    The-Complete-FAANG-Preparation

    12.3KAkashSingh3031/The-Complete-FAANG-Preparation · Jupyter Notebook

    A large curated repository of resources for preparing for FAANG-style technical interviews: Data Structures and Algorithms sheets (450 DSA by Love Babbar, Striver's SheetS, Apna College), FAANG interview questions, core CS subjects, and system design material.

  41. 44

    awesome-software-architecture

    11.7Kmehdihadeli/awesome-software-architecture · TypeScript

    A curated catalog of articles, videos, courses, books, and other resources for learning and practicing software architecture, patterns, and principles, covering everything from design patterns and DDD to cloud, distributed systems, and AI engineering.

  42. 45

    from_coder_to_expert

    11.2K0voice/from_coder_to_expert

    A curated Chinese collection of internal tech-sharing PDFs and PPTs from engineers at big Chinese tech companies, pitched as a path 'from coder to CTO', plus a weekly job-listing section.

  43. 46

    A-Curated-List-of-ML-System-Design-Case-Studies

    11KEngineer1999/A-Curated-List-of-ML-System-Design-Case-Studies

    A curated collection of 300+ real-world machine learning system design case studies from over 80 companies like Netflix, Airbnb, Stripe, and Doordash, organized by industry and ML use case.

  44. 47

    machine-learning-systems-design

    10.7Kchiphuyen/machine-learning-systems-design · HTML

    A free booklet on designing machine learning systems, covering four main steps: project setup, data pipeline, modeling (selecting, training, debugging), and serving (testing, deploying, maintaining), with links to practical resources and case studies.

  45. 48

    maths-cs-ai-compendium

    7.7KHenryNdubuaku/maths-cs-ai-compendium · TypeScript

    An open, unconventional online textbook covering maths, computing and AI from the ground up — intuition first, real-world context, for practitioners who want deep understanding rather than exam survival.

  46. 49

    ai-infra-book

    6.7Kbojieli/ai-infra-book · Python

    An open-source book, 'Understanding AI Infra: Quantitative Analysis and System Design' by Bojie Li, that derives LLM inference and training system designs from hardware constraints and model architecture using quantitative, order-of-magnitude estimates.

  47. 50

    server-survival

    6.4Kpshenok/server-survival · JavaScript

    Server Survival is an interactive 3D tower-defense-style game where you play a Cloud Architect, building and scaling cloud infrastructure to survive growing traffic and DDoS attacks while learning real cloud architecture concepts.

  48. 51

    The-Accidental-CTO

    3.9Ksubhashchy/The-Accidental-CTO · TypeScript

    This is 'The Accidental CTO', a story-driven system design handbook by Subhash Choudhary about scaling the Dukaan e-commerce platform from zero to over a million stores without a formal CS degree.

  49. 52

    SDE-Interview-and-Prep-Roadmap

    3.7Kaasthas2022/SDE-Interview-and-Prep-Roadmap · Python

    A massive checklist-style roadmap for preparing for Software Development Engineer (SDE) interviews, covering Data Structures, Algorithms, System Design, Operating Systems, Networking, Databases, Programming Concepts, and System Architecture.

  50. 53

    pr-lens

    2.1Kcoldteadotai/pr-lens · TypeScript

    PR Lens draws every pull request as animated architecture and data-flow diagrams, posted as a comment inside the pull request itself, so you can see what a change does before reading the diff line by line.

  51. 54

    breakscale

    1.7Kxevrion/breakscale · TypeScript

    Breakscale is a system design simulator where you place components on a canvas, wire them together, then drag a traffic slider and watch a real discrete-event simulation show latency, queues, and failures emerge, so you can learn how distributed systems behave under load.

  52. 55

    csapp-zh-markdown

    991SunnyMaria/csapp-zh-markdown · Python

    A complete Chinese Markdown edition of CSAPP (Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, 3rd edition) — full chapter text, official exercise answers, Chinese write-ups for the 8 CSAPP labs, and the official self-study lab packages, readable online or offline.

  53. 56

    ai-system-design

    672amitshekhariitbhu/ai-system-design · Markdown

    A free, open-source guide that teaches AI System Design step by step: how to combine GPUs, inference servers, caches, vector databases, AI agents, guardrails, and evals into one system that is fast, cheap, reliable, and safe.

  54. 57

    enterprise-system-design

    642DrHazemAli/enterprise-system-design

    This is a source-grounded engineering course and architectural reference for designing enterprise systems that survive real traffic, partial failure, security review, and changing requirements, covering distributed systems, AI workloads, cybersecurity, reliability, cloud, HPC, and edge infrastructure built on Azure.

  55. 58

    svg-diagram

    627bybit-exchange/svg-diagram · JavaScript

    It is an Agent Skill that teaches coding agents like Claude Code and Codex a strict house style for hand-drawn SVG diagrams (architecture, flowchart, sequence, data-flow, lifecycle), plus a zero-dependency linter called svg-lint that checks the finished SVG against that style.

  56. 59

    system-atlas

    438inkboard/system-atlas · HTML

    An agent skill that turns an architecture discussion into an explorable isometric atlas: one data file produces both an interactive HTML map and a generated SYSTEM.md text twin.

  57. 60

    Overflow

    170Dollbar/Overflow · SystemVerilog

    Overflow is an open-source hardware engineering project from the Dollbar organization at USTC that builds synthesizable RTL for an AI accelerator SoC (NPU plus KDLink interconnect), targeting a Kimi-K3-scale mixture-of-experts model as the reference workload.

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