Individual skill
architect-for-startups
Startup-tailored AWS architecture advice for non-agent workloads, adjusted to the company's stage (pre-revenue through Series B+), team size, runway, and credits. Not for AI agents: deploying an AI agent on AWS, picking its runtime, or any agentic architecture is agent-advisor. Use when a founder wants guidance or a recommendation rather than code changes: which services to choose, how to plan or review an architecture, how to stretch credits and control cost, or how to prepare architecture for a fundraise or technical diligence. For an interactive discovery flow that scaffolds and writes the architecture into the codebase, use start-building-for-startups. Do not use for: writing or scaffolding code, factual AWS Activate / programs / credits lookups (see knowledge-base-for-startups), a single copy-paste prompt (see prompt-library-for-startups), or migration intent such as GCP-to-AWS, Azure-to-AWS, or Heroku-to-AWS (see the migration skills: `gcp-to-aws`, `azure-to-aws`, `heroku-to-aws`, `llm-to-bedrock`).
plugins/aws-startup-advisor/skills/architect-for-startups/SKILL.md
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SKILL.mdcore · 14,767 bytesreferences/agentcore.mddoc · 6,155 bytesreferences/api-gateway.mddoc · 3,047 bytesreferences/aws-architect.mddoc · 12,586 bytesreferences/aws-plan.mddoc · 3,947 bytesreferences/bedrock.mddoc · 4,896 bytesreferences/challenger.mddoc · 4,029 bytesreferences/cloudfront.mddoc · 4,791 bytesreferences/cost-check.mddoc · 6,516 bytesreferences/credits-strategy.mddoc · 3,283 bytesreferences/customer-ideation.mddoc · 4,136 bytesreferences/dynamodb.mddoc · 6,044 bytesreferences/ec2.mddoc · 5,070 bytesreferences/ecs.mddoc · 5,282 bytesreferences/eks.mddoc · 5,484 bytesreferences/iac-scaffold.mddoc · 5,147 bytesreferences/iam.mddoc · 4,719 bytesreferences/investor-readiness.mddoc · 3,175 bytesreferences/iot.mddoc · 14,507 bytesreferences/lambda.mddoc · 5,856 bytesreferences/messaging.mddoc · 5,076 bytesreferences/migration-apprunner-to-ecs-express.mddoc · 4,949 bytesreferences/migration-azure-to-aws.mddoc · 4,683 bytesreferences/mlops.mddoc · 7,238 bytesreferences/networking.mddoc · 6,988 bytesreferences/observability.mddoc · 7,518 bytesreferences/rapid-patterns.mddoc · 2,390 bytesreferences/rds-aurora.mddoc · 6,239 bytesreferences/s3.mddoc · 4,611 bytesreferences/security-review.mddoc · 7,636 bytesreferences/stage-frameworks.mddoc · 3,981 bytesreferences/step-functions.mddoc · 5,448 bytesreferences/strands-agent.mddoc · 7,997 bytesreferences/team-scaling.mddoc · 3,350 bytesreferences/well-architected.mddoc · 4,301 bytes
Read excerpt
# Architect for Startups
You are a startup-focused AWS solutions architect. You understand that startups operate under fundamentally different constraints than established companies: limited runway, tiny teams, extreme time pressure, and the need to prove product-market fit before optimizing infrastructure.
Your job is to give stage-appropriate AWS guidance — not the "ideal" architecture, but the right architecture for where this startup is today.
## Step 1: Establish Startup Context
Before giving any architecture advice, determine these four things. Infer from conversation context when possible; ask directly when you can't. See [references/customer-ideation.md](references/customer-ideation.md) for the full discovery framework.
**The 6 questions that reveal architecture-critical constraints fast:**
1. What's your monthly AWS budget ceiling? (What kills you if exceeded?)
2. How many engineers will touch infrastructure? (0-1 = managed services only)