Back to Skills

Scale Game

Elios-FPT
Updated Today
120 views
1
View on GitHub
Testingtesting

About

The Scale Game skill helps developers test systems at extreme scales (1000x bigger/smaller, instant/year-long) to expose fundamental truths hidden at normal operation. It's used when uncertain about scalability, edge cases, or validating architecture for production volumes. The technique reveals algorithmic limits, concurrency issues, and error handling adequacy by testing across dimensions like volume, speed, and users.

Quick Install

Claude Code

Recommended
Plugin CommandRecommended
/plugin add https://github.com/Elios-FPT/EliosCodePracticeService
Git CloneAlternative
git clone https://github.com/Elios-FPT/EliosCodePracticeService.git ~/.claude/skills/Scale Game

Copy and paste this command in Claude Code to install this skill

Documentation

Scale Game

Overview

Test your approach at extreme scales to find what breaks and what surprisingly survives.

Core principle: Extremes expose fundamental truths hidden at normal scales.

Quick Reference

Scale DimensionTest At ExtremesWhat It Reveals
Volume1 item vs 1B itemsAlgorithmic complexity limits
SpeedInstant vs 1 yearAsync requirements, caching needs
Users1 user vs 1B usersConcurrency issues, resource limits
DurationMilliseconds vs yearsMemory leaks, state growth
Failure rateNever fails vs always failsError handling adequacy

Process

  1. Pick dimension - What could vary extremely?
  2. Test minimum - What if this was 1000x smaller/faster/fewer?
  3. Test maximum - What if this was 1000x bigger/slower/more?
  4. Note what breaks - Where do limits appear?
  5. Note what survives - What's fundamentally sound?

Examples

Example 1: Error Handling

Normal scale: "Handle errors when they occur" works fine At 1B scale: Error volume overwhelms logging, crashes system Reveals: Need to make errors impossible (type systems) or expect them (chaos engineering)

Example 2: Synchronous APIs

Normal scale: Direct function calls work At global scale: Network latency makes synchronous calls unusable Reveals: Async/messaging becomes survival requirement, not optimization

Example 3: In-Memory State

Normal duration: Works for hours/days At years: Memory grows unbounded, eventual crash Reveals: Need persistence or periodic cleanup, can't rely on memory

Red Flags You Need This

  • "It works in dev" (but will it work in production?)
  • No idea where limits are
  • "Should scale fine" (without testing)
  • Surprised by production behavior

Remember

  • Extremes reveal fundamentals
  • What works at one scale fails at another
  • Test both directions (bigger AND smaller)
  • Use insights to validate architecture early

GitHub Repository

Elios-FPT/EliosCodePracticeService
Path: .claude/skills/problem-solving/scale-game

Related Skills

evaluating-llms-harness

Testing

This Claude Skill runs the lm-evaluation-harness to benchmark LLMs across 60+ standardized academic tasks like MMLU and GSM8K. It's designed for developers to compare model quality, track training progress, or report academic results. The tool supports various backends including HuggingFace and vLLM models.

View skill

webapp-testing

Testing

This Claude Skill provides a Playwright-based toolkit for testing local web applications through Python scripts. It enables frontend verification, UI debugging, screenshot capture, and log viewing while managing server lifecycles. Use it for browser automation tasks but run scripts directly rather than reading their source code to avoid context pollution.

View skill

content-collections

Meta

This skill provides a production-tested setup for Content Collections, a TypeScript-first tool that transforms Markdown/MDX files into type-safe data collections with Zod validation. Use it when building blogs, documentation sites, or content-heavy Vite + React applications to ensure type safety and automatic content validation. It covers everything from Vite plugin configuration and MDX compilation to deployment optimization and schema validation.

View skill

finishing-a-development-branch

Testing

This skill helps developers complete finished work by verifying tests pass and then presenting structured integration options. It guides the workflow for merging, creating PRs, or cleaning up branches after implementation is done. Use it when your code is ready and tested to systematically finalize the development process.

View skill