The Computing Series

F6 — The 6 System Archetypes

# Archetype Primary Concern Key Failure Modes
A1 Search & Discovery Relevance + latency FM6, FM8
A2 Social & Communication Delivery + fan-out FM3, FM6, FM7
A3 Marketplace & Transaction Correctness + consistency FM4, FM9, FM12
A4 Media Delivery CDN hit rate + storage cost FM6, FM8
A5 Data Intelligence Quality + freshness FM8, FM9
A6 Platform & API Reliability + backwards compat FM2, FM8

Archetype combinations: YouTube = A4 + A1 + A2 · Uber = A3 + A5 + A1 · Stripe = A3 + A6

Seam rule: The boundary between two archetypes is where the most interesting design problem lives.


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