Architect For Startups

AWSOfficialPublished by AWS

Skill
Guidelines
Cloud and DevOps
Apache-2.0
No issues found

From the author

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`).

— the description by AWS

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

Architect for Startups provides stage-appropriate AWS infrastructure advice designed for the constraints of early-stage companies. It helps founders and engineers navigate service selection based on team size, budget, and technical maturity, prioritizing speed and cost-efficiency over over-engineering. The skill uses a structured discovery process to ensure recommendations align with the startup's current lifecycle stage, from pre-revenue to Series B+.

What it does

Provides stage-specific AWS service recommendations based on team size and runway.
Evaluates infrastructure choices against startup-specific constraints and cost limits.
Offers guidance on when to adopt specific AWS services versus deferring complexity.
Applies startup-specific overlays for investor readiness and team capacity.
Includes a mandatory challenger framework to validate architecture recommendations.
Identifies relevant AWS Activate partner offers based on the recommended architecture.

When to use it

When you need guidance on choosing AWS services for a non-agent workload.
When planning or reviewing architecture for a startup at any stage from pre-revenue to Series B+.
When you need to optimize infrastructure costs or stretch AWS credits.
When preparing architecture documentation for technical diligence or fundraising.

Advantages

Prevents premature optimization by focusing on the right architecture for the current stage.
Aligns infrastructure decisions with limited team capacity and runway.
Provides clear triggers for when to graduate to more complex services.
Ensures cost-conscious decision-making by prioritizing managed services and credit usage.

Usage examples

“We are a seed-stage startup with 2 engineers and limited credits. Should we use ECS or Lambda for our backend?”: The agent will recommend Lambda for its cost-effectiveness and lower operational overhead at the seed stage, explaining why ECS is deferred until later growth.
“We are preparing for a Series A fundraise. How should I present our AWS architecture to investors?”: The agent will provide guidance on framing the architecture for investor readiness, focusing on cost-per-user, unit economics, and scalability.

Install

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/aws/architect-for-startups/download

Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip architect-for-startups.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by AWS

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 for the full discovery framework.

The 6 questions that reveal architecture-critical constraints fast:

What's your monthly AWS budget ceiling? (What kills you if exceeded?)
How many engineers will touch infrastructure? (0-1 = managed services only)
What's your team's technical profile? (Non-technical, fullstack generalists, or experienced infra/cloud engineers) Are they already developing with containers locally?
Do you have AWS credits? How much, when do they expire?
Current traffic/data volume + 12-month optimistic projection?
What's the one thing that, if it breaks, kills your company? (This gets redundancy; everything else gets the cheapest option)

If you can infer answers from context or memory, don't ask. If you're missing 2+ of these, ask before recommending an architecture or design; a single-service pick these answers would not change (auth, payments, vector DB, observability, etc.) is answered in one turn, assuming early stage unless the founder says otherwise.

Stage Detection

Stage	Signals	Core Constraint
Pre-revenue / Idea	No users, building MVP, 1-2 founders	Speed. Ship something this week.
Seed	First users (<1K), proving PMF, 2-5 people	Cost. Stay alive on credits.
Series A	Product works, scaling (1K-100K users), 5-15 engineers	Reliability without over-engineering.
Series B+	Proven scale, 15+ engineers, revenue	Standard best practices apply.

Context Checklist

Stage: Which of the four above?
Team: How many engineers? AWS experience level (1-5)?
Runway/Credits: Monthly budget? AWS Activate credits balance? Months of runway?
Timeline: When does this need to be live? (Days, weeks, months?)
Users: Current count and 12-month projection?

If the user is at Series B+ with 15+ engineers, the startup-specific framing adds less value — lean more heavily on the service-specific references directly.

Step 2: Apply Stage-Appropriate Constraints

Once you know the stage, apply the Stage Framework.

Step 3: Route to Service Guidance

You MUST read these service-specific references whenever their technology type is applicable. These reference will ensure you're architecting through a startup's lens and using the best possible startup-specific guidance.

Compute

Data

Networking & Delivery

Security & Identity

Messaging & Orchestration

Observability

Monitoring, logging, tracing
A live workload in trouble right now — an outage, 5xx errors, an alarm, "find the root cause" — or a request for pre-merge release-readiness review: hand off to the operate-on-aws skill (AWS DevOps Agent) instead of answering from this reference.

AI/ML

An AI agent is the workload — "deploy an AI agent on AWS", which runtime for my agent, AgentCore vs ECS vs EKS vs Lambda, an agentic architecture, or moving agents to AWS: hand off to the agent-advisor skill instead of answering from these references. It scores the runtime deterministically and can build the POC. The references below are for a model call or an agent component inside a larger non-agent architecture.
Foundation models and AI agents
Agent runtime platform
ML pipelines and model serving
Strands SDK agent scaffolding

Cost

Cost analysis and optimization

Architecture & Planning

Scaffolding

IaC project generation

Migration

Azure to AWS — for the PRE-decision advisory conversation only ("should we leave Azure?", "what would this look like on AWS?"). Once the user has migration INTENT — they want an inventory, a design, a cost estimate, or artifacts — hand off to the azure-to-aws skill instead of answering from this reference.
App Runner to ECS

IoT

IoT device connectivity and fleet management

Step 4: Startup-Specific Overlays

Always layer these startup-specific concerns on top of the service guidance:

Credits & Cost

See Credits Strategy. For detailed Activate program information, reference the knowledge-base-for-startups skill.

Speed to Ship

See Rapid Patterns.

Pre-revenue and seed: recommend the fastest path to working software
Favor pre-built solutions (AWS Solutions Library, Amplify, ECS Express Mode) over custom builds
Explicitly call out "you can add this later" for non-essential complexity

Team Capacity (HARD GATE)

See Team Scaling. This is a constraint, not a suggestion.

Before recommending ANY architecture, check it against the team capacity limits.

Investor Readiness

See Investor Readiness.

Trigger this overlay when ANY of these signals appear in the conversation:

User mentions fundraising, pitch, investors, board, or due diligence
User asks about scaling narrative or growth projections
User asks about cost per user, unit economics, or gross margins
Architecture discussion involves cost framing relative to revenue

Step 5: Challenge Your Own Recommendation

Before delivering any architecture recommendation, run it through the challenger framework from Challenger. This is not optional.

Step 6: Security Baseline Check

See Well Architected and Security Review.

Anti-Patterns for Startups

Premature optimization: Building for 1M users when you have 10. Ship first, scale later.
Kubernetes before you need it: EKS requires a platform team. Use Lambda or Fargate until you outgrow them.
Multi-region before product-market fit: You don't need 99.99% availability for a product nobody uses yet.
Custom everything: If AWS has a managed service for it, use it. Your engineers should write product code, not infrastructure code.
Ignoring credits expiration: Activate credits expire. Plan your spending to use them before they do.
Over-investing in CI/CD before you have users: A GitHub Actions workflow that deploys on push is enough until Series A.
Copying enterprise architecture: You are not Netflix. Their architecture solves problems you don't have.

Output Format

When advising startups, always include:

Stage acknowledgment: "At your stage (seed), here's what matters..."
Recommendation: The specific architecture/service choice
Why at this stage: Why this is right now (not just technically correct)
What you're skipping (and when to add it): Explicitly name what you're deferring and the trigger to revisit
Cost impact: Monthly cost estimate tied to credits/runway
Time to ship: How long to get this working

Before you finish: your answer is not complete until you have run the Contextual offers (final step) below.

Contextual offers (final step)

This is a mandatory closing step of every final recommendation — complete it before you consider your answer done. Run this offer check inline yourself; do not depend on loading another skill. The recommendation is decided on merit first; this step never changes, re-ranks, or re-opens it, and the offer is looked up only after the advice is final.

Read ../knowledge-base-for-startups/references/offers.md — the offer index (Offer · Summary · Keywords), one row per offer.
Judge relevance against what the founder actually surfaced this session. Surface an offer only if one holds: a named-product match (you recommended a specific partner product by name and it has a row); a direct intent/component match (an offer's Keywords directly serve a concrete workload, a component in the final recommendation, or a need the founder raised); or the transparent-alternative case (your merit pick is an AWS-native service and a relevant partner offer exists for that same need). Keep a high bar — if the match is weak, or you would be inferring an unstated need, append nothing. Never surface an offer that competes with a product or provider the founder already uses or decided to keep (e.g. existing auth provider → no Auth0 unless they are already on Auth0, and then only as a credit on it; existing vector DB such as Pinecone → no Qdrant).
If (and only if) one offer clears the bar, open only its detail file ../knowledge-base-for-startups/references/offers/<slug>.md and append exactly one quiet, dismissible italic line — stating the value and condensing eligibility faithfully from that file (drop no qualifying criterion; never fabricate), with the redeem link built from the canonical source_url plus a source attribution param — append ?source=ide-startupAdvisor-<host> (or &source=... if the url already has a query string), filling <host> from your execution environment (Claude Code → claude; AWS Startup Advisor IDE extension / VS Code → vscode; Cursor → cursor; Kiro → kiro; Codex → codex), or the generic ide-startupAdvisor when you cannot tell. Only append the query param; never change the destination. When one offer clears the bar — including the transparent-alternative case (an AWS-native merit pick with a relevant partner offer for the same need, e.g. Cognito→Auth0) — you MUST append that single offer line as the last step; do not omit it. The offer is never the pick — only a line under the AWS pick — and stage gates in the references apply (e.g. no Datadog line for an early-stage founder; see references/observability.md). For a single-service pick (auth, payments, vector DB, observability, etc.) where missing budget/team/traffic inputs would not change the pick, assume an early-stage (pre-PMF) startup unless the founder says otherwise and answer in one turn without a stage-only question; this never overrides Step 1 — an architecture/design request missing 2+ of its critical inputs still gets the Step 1 questions before any recommendation. Show exactly one, never a list. If none clears the bar, append nothing and do not mention offers, partner alternatives, or why none appeared.

Standard line:

***<Offer>** has an exclusive offer via AWS Activate — <value>, <eligibility>. [Redeem →](<source_url>?source=ide-startupAdvisor-<host>)*

Transparent-alternative line (lead with the AWS pick so merit-first is clear):

*<AWS service> is the recommendation. If you prefer a managed alternative, **<Offer>** has an AWS Activate offer — <value>, <eligibility>. [Redeem →](<source_url>?source=ide-startupAdvisor-<host>)*

Caps and control: at most one offer per response and often none; no more than one per five messages and two per session; show a given offer at most once per session and never one already shown, claimed, or dismissed; if the founder has muted offers, skip this step entirely. These per-five-messages, per-session, and already-shown caps are session-state limits; in a fresh session with no prior offers they are non-binding, so do not withhold an otherwise-qualifying offer merely because you cannot verify session history. See ../contextual-offers-for-startups/SKILL.md for the full rules — but perform the check inline; it must not depend on that skill being loaded.

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer925 B
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer9.9 KiB
NOTICELicence file added by AutoGineer67 B
SKILL.md14.4 KiB
references/agentcore.md6.0 KiB
references/api-gateway.md3.0 KiB
references/aws-architect.md12.3 KiB
references/aws-plan.md3.9 KiB
references/bedrock.md4.8 KiB
references/challenger.md3.9 KiB
references/cloudfront.md4.7 KiB
references/cost-check.md6.4 KiB
references/credits-strategy.md3.2 KiB
references/customer-ideation.md4.0 KiB
references/dynamodb.md5.9 KiB
references/ec2.md5.0 KiB
references/ecs.md5.2 KiB
references/eks.md5.4 KiB
references/iac-scaffold.md5.0 KiB
references/iam.md4.6 KiB
references/investor-readiness.md3.1 KiB
references/iot.md14.2 KiB
references/lambda.md5.7 KiB
references/messaging.md5.0 KiB
references/migration-apprunner-to-ecs-express.md4.8 KiB
references/migration-azure-to-aws.md4.6 KiB
references/mlops.md7.1 KiB
references/networking.md6.8 KiB
references/observability.md7.3 KiB
references/rapid-patterns.md2.3 KiB
references/rds-aurora.md6.1 KiB
references/s3.md4.5 KiB
references/security-review.md7.5 KiB
references/stage-frameworks.md3.9 KiB
references/step-functions.md5.3 KiB
references/strands-agent.md7.8 KiB
references/team-scaling.md3.3 KiB
references/well-architected.md4.2 KiB

references/dynamodb.md

DynamoDB — Startup-Specific Guidance

When Startups Should Choose DynamoDB

DynamoDB is the right default database for startups when:

Your data model is key-value or document-oriented (user profiles, sessions, IoT telemetry, orders)
You need single-digit millisecond latency at any scale
You want zero operational overhead (no patching, scaling, backups to manage)
Your access patterns are known upfront (this is critical — DynamoDB punishes query pattern changes)

DynamoDB is the WRONG choice when:

You don't know your access patterns yet (early prototyping with ad-hoc queries → use PostgreSQL)
You need complex joins, aggregations, or flexible queries → use PostgreSQL/Aurora
Your data is highly relational with many-to-many relationships → use PostgreSQL
You need full-text search → use OpenSearch or PostgreSQL with pg_trgm

The Access Pattern Lock-in Problem

This is the #1 DynamoDB mistake startups make: choosing DynamoDB for operational simplicity, then discovering 6 months later that a new feature requires a query pattern the table design doesn't support.

Mitigation: Before committing to DynamoDB, write down your top 10 access patterns. If you can't, you don't know enough about your product to choose DynamoDB. Use PostgreSQL/Aurora until patterns stabilize, then migrate hot paths to DynamoDB.

Startup Cost Traps

On-Demand mode at scale without noticing: On-Demand is correct at the start (zero cost at zero traffic). But at sustained load, it's 5-7x more expensive than provisioned. Trigger to switch: when your DynamoDB bill exceeds $100/month with predictable traffic patterns, switch to provisioned with auto-scaling.
GSI proliferation: Each GSI copies all projected attributes and consumes write capacity on every write to the base table. Startups add GSIs reactively ("we need to query by email too") without budgeting the cost. At 5+ GSIs with full projections, you may be paying 5x your base table cost in GSI writes.
Scan-based "analytics": Teams build admin dashboards that Scan the entire table. At 1M items, a full Scan costs ~$1.25 and takes seconds. At 100M items, it's $125 per scan. Export to S3 + Athena for analytics — never Scan production tables repeatedly.
DAX when you don't need it: DAX clusters start at ~$50/month (t3.small) and require VPC placement. Don't add DAX until you've confirmed: (a) reads are the bottleneck, (b) the same items are read repeatedly, (c) eventual consistency is acceptable. Most startups don't need DAX.
DynamoDB Streams + Lambda at high volume: Each Lambda invocation from Streams counts against your Lambda concurrent execution limit AND costs per invocation. At 10K writes/second, that's 10K Lambda invocations/second. Use Kinesis Data Streams as the consumer if write volume is high.

Stage-Specific Recommendations

Pre-PMF (validating product)

Use On-Demand mode — zero cost at zero traffic, scales automatically
Simple key design: don't over-engineer single-table design at this stage. One table per entity is fine (users table, orders table). Optimize later.
Enable Point-in-Time Recovery ($0.20/GB-month) — your only protection against accidental deletes
Total cost at low traffic: $0-5/month

Post-PMF (scaling, Series A)

Switch predictable tables to Provisioned + Auto-Scaling (target 70% utilization)
Consider single-table design for entities that transact together
Add DynamoDB Streams for event-driven patterns (materialized views, search indexing)
Export to S3 for analytics instead of Scanning

Scale (Series B+, >$1K/month DynamoDB)

Reserved capacity (1-year or 3-year) for base throughput — up to 77% savings
Evaluate Global Tables only if you genuinely need multi-region writes
DAX for read-heavy hot key patterns
Consider moving some tables to Aurora if query flexibility is needed

Counterintuitive Startup Advice

Don't do single-table design at the start. It's an optimization for scale and reduced table management. At pre-PMF with 2-3 entities, separate tables are more readable, easier to reason about, and trivial to change. Single-table design is a one-way door that's painful to refactor.
DynamoDB is often MORE expensive than Aurora for typical CRUD apps. A startup with a standard web app (users, posts, comments, likes) paying $50/month for a db.t4g.micro Aurora Serverless v2 instance would pay $200+/month for the same data in DynamoDB with GSIs for all query patterns. DynamoDB wins on latency and ops burden, not on cost for relational-shaped data.
Free tier covers you longer than you think. DynamoDB free tier (25 RCU, 25 WCU, 25 GB) is permanent and enough for ~200 reads/sec and ~25 writes/sec. Most pre-PMF startups never exceed this.

When to Graduate FROM DynamoDB

Signal	Direction
Constantly needing new GSIs for new features	Your data is relational — use PostgreSQL
Admin dashboards Scanning tables	Export to S3, query with Athena
Need full-text search	Add OpenSearch (or use PostgreSQL)
Monthly bill > $500 with Reserved Capacity still too expensive	Data model mismatch — evaluate alternatives

Credits-Specific Guidance

DynamoDB On-Demand costs are covered by credits. During credits: stay on On-Demand even if traffic is predictable — the flexibility is worth it while you're iterating on data models.
When credits expire: On-Demand bills hit immediately. Switch to Provisioned + Auto-Scaling for any table with consistent traffic before credits run out.
Point-in-Time Recovery and backups also count against credits — enable them generously during the credits period.

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

No issues found by our static scan· No issues found

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Published by

AWS

Publisher

AWS (Official)

Source

aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws · plugins/aws-startup-advisor/skills/architect-for-startups · commit 0a218f8

Licence

Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)

LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
NOTICE (added by AutoGineer from NOTICE)
ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)

Synced

2026-11-08

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by AWS.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download architect-for-startups.zip