Database design

Skill payals/ai-skills-engine/dot_cursor/skills/development/development/database-design

Database design principles and decision-making. Schema design, indexing strategy, ORM selection, serverless databases.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add payals/ai-skills-engine --skill database-design

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SKILL.md

1.5 KB, 312 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Database Design

Learn to THINK, not copy SQL patterns.

🎯 Selective Reading Rule

Read ONLY files relevant to the request! Check the content map, find what you need.

File	Description	When to Read
`database-selection.md`	PostgreSQL vs Neon vs Turso vs SQLite	Choosing database
`orm-selection.md`	Drizzle vs Prisma vs Kysely	Choosing ORM
`schema-design.md`	Normalization, PKs, relationships	Designing schema
`indexing.md`	Index types, composite indexes	Performance tuning
`optimization.md`	N+1, EXPLAIN ANALYZE	Query optimization
`migrations.md`	Safe migrations, serverless DBs	Schema changes

⚠️ Core Principle

ASK user for database preferences when unclear
Choose database/ORM based on CONTEXT
Don't default to PostgreSQL for everything

Decision Checklist

Before designing schema:

Asked user about database preference?
Chosen database for THIS context?
Considered deployment environment?
Planned index strategy?
Defined relationship types?

Anti-Patterns

❌ Default to PostgreSQL for simple apps (SQLite may suffice) ❌ Skip indexing ❌ Use SELECT * in production ❌ Store JSON when structured data is better ❌ Ignore N+1 queries

What ships with it: 7 files

11.4 KB alongside SKILL.md, 1 of them executable

scripts/

schema_validator.pyruns5.2 KB

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most databases sql skills give in 312 tokens

Counted across 609 of the 712 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-09-06

Index all foreign key columnsin 26 of 609
Use cursor pagination instead of offsetin 25 of 609, across 20 files
Use timestamptz for timestampsin 21 of 609
Specify columns instead of using select starin 20 of 609, across 10 files
Use parameterized queries for all database interactionsin 20 of 609, across 19 files
Use Enum for categorical datain 17 of 609, across 7 files
Order by frequently filtered columnsin 17 of 609, across 7 files
Batch data insertsin 17 of 609, across 7 files
Use expand-contract pattern for schema changesin 17 of 609
Use materialized views for real-time aggregationsin 16 of 609, across 6 files
Partition tables by timein 16 of 609, across 6 files
Use smallest appropriate data typesin 16 of 609, across 6 files

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.