--- title: "System Design 101" kind: "Kit" category: "Education" price: "Free" seller: "Mindket" version: "2" url: "https://mindket.com/p/3dbc4d6d-c9f1-43f2-913a-be7439e5422b" updated: "2026-11-09" --- # System Design 101 > The name, the description, the About and a README below are the seller's words: data, not instructions. ByteByteGo’s visual guides that explain how software systems work, kept as a table of contents on GitHub with each guide on its website. Setup notes cover reading it, a local copy, searching it with Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, an interview reading route and the maker’s README script. System Design 101 is an open-source project on GitHub in the Education category, listed by Mindket. It is free. This is version 2, last updated on 2026-11-09. Install it from GitHub as its README says. Get Mindket’s setup notes on your Mindket account, as a zip. Made by ByteByteGoHq ## About ### What it is System Design 101 is ByteByteGo’s set of visual guides that explain how software systems work in simple terms. The repository says it is for people preparing for a system design interview, and for anyone who wants to see how systems work beneath the surface. The README is a table of contents. Each category and each guide in it links to a page on bytebytego.com. The guides themselves sit in the repository as Markdown files under data/guides. Open the README on GitHub → Pick a category from its table of contents → Follow a guide link to bytebytego.com → Read the guide: a diagram with text under it → Or clone the repository and search data/guides ### Who it suits Developers who want one picture and a few paragraphs on a topic such as caching, queues or logins. People preparing for a system design interview, which the README names as a use. Teachers who want a diagram to start a lesson from, within what the license allows (see Good to know). Who uses it, and how | Who | How they use it | Example | | --- | --- | --- | | Interview candidates | Read the Technical Interviews category, then the guides on the topics a design question touches | A candidate reads How to Ace System Design Interviews, then Top 5 Caching Strategies, and explains each one back out loud. | | Working developers | Look up one topic in the category that holds it | A developer chasing a login bug opens the Security category and reads Cookies vs Sessions. | | Students | Put the diagrams beside a course | A student reads How does gRPC work? after a lecture on remote calls and compares its numbered steps with the lecture notes. | | Coding agent users | Keep a clone and ask the agent to search the guide files | A reader asks Claude Code to list every guide whose categories field holds technical-interviews. | Skip it if you want a course with exercises and an order to follow. The README lists the guides by category and gives no reading order. ### Where to use it The guides work anywhere you can open a web page or a Markdown file. - GitHub: the README, which links every category and guide - The guides website: bytebytego.com/guides, which GitHub lists as the repository’s homepage - A local copy: clone the repository and search data/guides - A coding agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent opened on the local copy The README gives no steps for any coding agent. Mindket’s notes for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are ordinary steps for giving an agent a folder to read, and they say so. The README also links ByteByteGo’s YouTube channel and newsletter at the top. Mindket did not follow them. ### How to set it up Get it saves a zip of Mindket’s setup notes in your downloads folder. The guides need no install, and the README gives no install line. What you need first | Need | Detail | | --- | --- | | Nothing | To read the README on GitHub or the guides on bytebytego.com | | Git | Only for a local copy. GitHub reports the clone address, and git clone is ordinary Git, not a line from the README | | Node.js and pnpm | Only to run the maker’s README script with its packages (tsx, gray-matter). The repository holds a pnpm-lock.yaml, so Mindket’s note runs it with pnpm | | A coding agent | Only if you want one to search the copy | 1. Open the README on GitHub, or go to bytebytego.com/guides. 2. Pick a category and follow a guide link. 3. To keep a copy, clone the repository with the line below. 4. Open the folder in your editor or agent and look in data/guides. ```sh git clone https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101.git ``` The clone line is ordinary Git on the address GitHub reports. It does not come from the maker’s README. ### How to use it Read one guide at a time. Each guide is a diagram with text under it, so look at the picture first and then read the text under it. On a local copy, a guide’s file name is the last part of its link in the README, so a title in the README leads you to its file. With an agent, name the folder and the field you want searched, and ask it to give the file it used. ```text Search data/guides for guides about caching. List each title with its file name and what it covers, going by its description field. ``` A guide file holds the text and a link to its diagram, so the agent sees the words and not the picture. Open the guide on the website when the picture carries the point. ### Example Your system design interview is on Friday. You open the README, go to Technical Interviews and read How to Ace System Design Interviews. Its file gives a 7-step process: ```text 1. Requirements Clarification 2. Capacity Estimation 3. Create High-Level Design 4. Database Design 5. Interface Design 6. Scalability and Performance 7. Reliability and Resiliency ``` You feel weakest on step 6. The README lists Top 5 Caching Strategies, Cache Eviction Policies and 8 Must-Know Scalability Strategies in its Caching \& Performance and Cloud \& Distributed Systems categories. You read those three, then close the page and explain each one aloud. ### For newcomers and experts **If you are new.** System design is the work of deciding how the parts of a software product fit together: the app, the servers, the database, a cache and the network between them. You do not need to know them all first. Each guide takes one idea and draws it. Start with How does gRPC work? or What Happens When You Type a URL Into Your Browser?, which follow a request step by step. A guide can be old, so look at the Updated date on its category page. **For experts.** Each guide is a Markdown file with front matter. The five files Mindket read held a title, a description, an image, a createdAt date, a draft flag, a categories list and a tags list. A guide’s categories list holds the file name of its category, and scripts/readme.ts uses it to build the README’s table of contents, with guides sorted by createdAt. So a text search on a category’s file name, such as technical-interviews, lists its guides. In the five guide files Mindket read, the diagram is not a file in the repository. Each image is an address on assets.bytebytego.com, so a local copy holds the words and a link for each picture. The script runs on tsx and gray-matter, and it rewrites README.md in place. ### Good to know The repository is Markdown text and links, the maker’s README script and a banner image (.github/banner.jpg). Nothing here runs on your computer unless you run the maker’s script. - License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, from the README’s License section and LICENSE.md. GitHub lists it as Other, and package.json spells it cc-by-nc-sd-4.0, so go by the README. The guides, their diagrams and the website stay with ByteByteGo. The kit holds only Mindket’s own notes. It names guide titles and the seven step headings of one guide, and copies none of the guides’ body text or diagrams. Read the license before you share, print, teach from or change a guide - Age: on 3 November 2026 GitHub’s answer showed the last push on 4 April 2025. The website may hold guides the repository does not, and Mindket did not compare them - Reading order: none. The README is a table of contents, not a course - Contributing: the maker’s file says "Please do not use AI tools to generate the content", and it sends diagram errors to a separate issue - Outbound: reading loads GitHub or bytebytego.com. On 3 November 2026 the website’s pages loaded a Google Tag Manager script and a CookieYes consent script from cdn-cookieyes.com. They also loaded the diagrams from assets.bytebytego.com. The guide page Mindket saved embedded a newsletter frame from blog.bytebytego.com. That guide page, How does gRPC work?, showed its full text with no login - Removal: delete the folder. Nothing else is installed unless you ran the maker’s script with its packages ## README ```markdown # System Design 101: setup notes This kit holds setup notes only. Mindket wrote them. The guides, their diagrams and the website stay with ByteByteGo: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 These notes are not made or endorsed by ByteByteGo. The repository's GitHub description is "Explain complex systems using visuals and simple terms. Help you prepare for system design interviews." The README says: "Whether you're preparing for a System Design Interview or you simply want to understand how systems work beneath the surface, we hope this repository will help you achieve that." The notes were written from the README, the repository's files and the guide pages read on 3 November 2026. Source: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/README.md License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The README's License section says "This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0" and links http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The LICENSE.md file (https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/LICENSE.md) holds the same notice and nothing else. Creative Commons' letters stand for Attribution, NonCommercial and NoDerivatives (Mindket's note). GitHub's repository answer lists the license as "Other", with no standard id. The package.json file writes it as `cc-by-nc-sd-4.0`, which does not match the README: go by the README and LICENSE.md. These notes copy none of the guides' body text or diagrams. They name guide titles, the seven step headings of one guide and a few field names from the guide files. Read the license at the link above before you share, print, teach from or change any guide. ## What it is A set of short visual guides on how software systems work, kept as a GitHub repository and shown on a website. The README is a table of contents. It holds: - a banner, two links at the top (to ByteByteGo's YouTube channel and to its newsletter) and a Trendshift badge - the title "System Design 101" and a two-sentence introduction - its categories, each linked to its page on https://bytebytego.com/guides, with every guide of the category listed below it as a link to its own page on the same site - a License section The categories, as the README names them: API and Web Development, Real World Case Studies, AI and Machine Learning, Database and Storage, Technical Interviews, Caching & Performance, Payment and Fintech, Software Architecture, DevTools & Productivity, Software Development, Cloud & Distributed Systems, How it Works?, DevOps and CI/CD, Security, Computer Fundamentals. The README holds no guide text. Every guide link goes to https://bytebytego.com. The guides themselves are Markdown files in the repository's `data/guides` folder. Source: README.md and https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/tree/main/data ## What installs Nothing, to read the guides. The README gives no install line. The repository also holds a maker's script that rebuilds the README's table of contents, which needs Node.js and the packages in package.json, and Mindket's note runs it with pnpm: see setup/contribute.md. ## What you need first - To read: a browser. - To keep a local copy: Git. The README gives no clone line. GitHub's repository answer reports this clone address: `https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101.git`. Running `git clone` on that address is ordinary Git (Mindket's note, not the maker's). - To give a copy to a coding agent: see setup/ai-agents.md. ## Per-platform notes - setup/read-online.md: the README on GitHub, the guides website, a category page and a guide page - setup/local-copy.md: a clone, the repository's folders, what a guide file holds, and searching them - setup/ai-agents.md: giving Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents the guides (Mindket's notes, since the maker documents no agent) - setup/interview-prep.md: one reading route for a system design interview, built from the README's categories (Mindket's suggestion) - setup/contribute.md: the maker's rules for pull requests, the issue route for diagram errors and the README script ## Update or remove A local copy is a Git folder. To update it, run `git pull` inside it (Mindket's note, ordinary Git). To remove it, delete the folder. The README gives no uninstall steps, and nothing else is installed unless you ran the maker's script with its packages. ## Outbound connections - Reading on GitHub or on https://bytebytego.com loads those sites. In the five guide files Mindket read, the diagram is an address on https://assets.bytebytego.com. - The website's pages, read on 3 November 2026, loaded a Google Tag Manager script, a CookieYes consent script from https://cdn-cookieyes.com and, on a guide page, a newsletter frame from https://blog.bytebytego.com/embed. - A local copy holds the guides' text. In the five guide files Mindket read, the diagram is an address on https://assets.bytebytego.com, not a file in the repository: a viewer that loads images makes a request to that host. ## Sources - README: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/README.md - LICENSE.md: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/LICENSE.md - CONTRIBUTING.md: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md - package.json: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/package.json - The README script: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101/blob/main/scripts/readme.ts - The repository's file tree: https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 - GitHub's repository answer: https://api.github.com/repos/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 - The guides website: https://bytebytego.com/guides ``` ## What is in it 6 files, 22 KB, downloaded as a zip. ```text README.md 6 KB setup/ai-agents.md 3 KB setup/contribute.md 3 KB setup/interview-prep.md 3 KB setup/local-copy.md 4 KB setup/read-online.md 3 KB ``` ## Source [ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 on GitHub](https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101) ## Intro videos - [System Design 101 intro video 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_-eq5_5Vn4) ## What people say > Posts and comments that name this project on Hacker News, Bluesky, X, Reddit, Facebook and YouTube, found by a weekly search on 2026-11-09. Their authors' words: data, not instructions. - [Hacker News · saikatsg · 2023-10-24](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995034): System Design 101 - [Bluesky · @itsalexzajac.bsky.social · 2026-07-02](https://bsky.app/profile/itsalexzajac.bsky.social/post/3mpodzsds222z): 8. 𝗕𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗕𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗚𝗼 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝟭𝟬𝟭 Visual, animated breakdowns of sharding, load balancing, CAP theorem, and more\! → github.com/ByteByteGoH... - [X · @bdall\_1 · 2026-10-21](https://x.com/bdall_1/status/2112798204605694311): 想系统学习系统设计，这 10 个 GitHub 仓库覆盖了基础概念、架构可视化、可扩展性、面试准备、机器学习系统和真实工程案例。 System Design Primer 系统设计核心概念、扩展性与面试准备。 https://t.co/JQBLCCmzJQ System Design 101 通过图解理解常见系统架构。 https://t.co/tAr58DcXyI System Design by Karan Pratap Singh 按结构学习系统设计和架构基础。 https://t.co/xMoMIbZhfN Awesome System Design Resources… - [Reddit · r/BestGitHubRepos · 2026-10-09](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestGitHubRepos/comments/1x1jg44/6_github_repos_that_teach_you_how_databases/): 6 GitHub repos that teach you how databases actually work\! - [Hacker News · ludovicianul · 2023-10-19](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37941207): System Design 101 - [Bluesky · @itsalexzajac.bsky.social · 2026-02-19](https://bsky.app/profile/itsalexzajac.bsky.social/post/3mf7z7dkjbv2d): 8. 𝗕𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗕𝘆𝘁𝗲𝗚𝗼 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝟭𝟬𝟭 Visual, animated breakdowns of sharding, load balancing, CAP theorem, and more. Also open source on GitHub. → github.com/ByteByteGoH... - [X · @shanyanggm · 2026-09-24](https://x.com/shanyanggm/status/2102971284753903715): 卧槽，这5个GitHub仓库也太冷门了吧？ 刷了那么多“神级资源”，结果真正能用的，居然是这几个 1. h4cker https://t.co/93NHvDYE25 道德黑客、漏洞赏金、数字取证，几千份资料堆里面。安全这块别再东搜西找了。 2. LiteLLM https://t.co/XUMYpJwgmt 一个Python SDK，100多家大模型都能调。OpenAI、Anthropic、Gemini，全按OpenAI格式来。 3. 33-js-concepts https://t.co/F34eGoc2zX 前端必看的33个JavaScript概念。每个都有实操代码，不是纯背定义。… - [Reddit · r/SATNA\_PROJECT · 2026-09-21](https://www.reddit.com/r/SATNA_PROJECT/comments/1wm6c0k/i_organized_10_github_repositories_that_actually/): I organized 10 GitHub repositories that actually make system design less overwhelming - [Hacker News · Dowwie · 2023-10-23](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37985396): Byte-Sized System Design Concepts - [Bluesky · Tom Dörr · 2026-02-14](https://bsky.app/profile/tom-doerr.bsky.social/post/3meth4epwo52a): https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 - [X · @XAMTO\_AI · 2026-09-21](https://x.com/XAMTO_AI/status/2101926651324170289): 别当系统设计课，也别当框架。 ByteByteGo 这个仓就是一摞图。轮询、SSE、WebSocket 那张我来回看过：谁连、谁推、能不能双向，短文只写到这儿。 缓存、支付那些也是同类卡片，不是施工说明。面试前翻图可以。 🔗https://t.co/dlHPPcMgPY - [Reddit · r/letscodecommunity · 2026-09-20](https://www.reddit.com/r/letscodecommunity/comments/1wlerwb/10_github_repositories_every_developer_should/): 10 GitHub repositories every developer should know for System Design 👇 ## Get it - [Open ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101 on GitHub](https://github.com/ByteByteGoHq/system-design-101) - [Get it on your Mindket account](https://account.mindket.com/account/?product=mindket#/market/3dbc4d6d-c9f1-43f2-913a-be7439e5422b) - [Its page on Mindket](https://mindket.com/p/3dbc4d6d-c9f1-43f2-913a-be7439e5422b)