/dependency-graph Skill

Visualize system dependencies and identify critical paths, bottlenecks, and single points of failure.

When to Use This Skill

Use /dependency-graph when you need to:

• Understand what systems depend on a critical system
• Identify single points of failure
• Plan outage impact for maintenance
• Design disaster recovery strategies
• Perform risk assessment on architecture
• Plan system decommissioning (understand what breaks)
• Optimize architecture to reduce critical dependencies

Usage

/dependency-graph [root-system] [options]

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Required
root-system	System to analyze (or "all" for enterprise graph)	Optional
--depth	How many hops to follow (1=direct, 2=direct+indirect, all)	Optional
--direction	Direction to follow (upstream=sources, downstream=consumers, both)	Optional
--visualization	Graph format (text, ascii-art, mermaid, d3)	Optional

Workflow

Phase 1: Define Graph Scope

User specifies:

1. Root system (optional - default: all systems)

   • Single system (system:ERP)
   • All systems (enterprise)
   • Critical systems only

2. Depth (optional)

   • 1 - Direct dependencies only (immediate consumers/producers)
   • 2 - Direct + indirect (one level deeper)
   • all - All paths to edges (complete dependency closure)

3. Direction (optional)

   • upstream - What feeds into this system (sources)
   • downstream - What consumes from this system
   • both - Both upstream and downstream (default)

4. Visualization (optional)

   • text - ASCII text representation
   • ascii-art - Fancy ASCII visualization
   • mermaid - Mermaid diagram (for markdown)
   • d3 - Interactive D3 visualization (HTML)

Phase 2: Analyze Dependencies

The skill:

1. Builds dependency graph

   • Reads all Integration notes
   • Maps directional relationships
   • Calculates paths and cycles

2. Identifies critical paths

   • Paths that affect critical systems
   • Paths with no redundancy (single points of failure)
   • Paths with high latency impact

3. Scores risk

   • If root system fails, how many others affected?
   • What is average recovery time?
   • Are there failover paths?

4. Detects patterns

   • Hub systems (many connections)
   • Isolated clusters
   • Circular dependencies (if any)
   • Chain reactions (cascading failures)

Phase 3: Generate Visualization

Creates graph showing:

• Nodes: Systems (colored by criticality)
• Edges: Integrations (colored by type: real-time, batch, API)
• Edge labels: Latency, criticality, frequency
• Highlighted: Critical paths, single points of failure

Phase 4: Output

Generates report with:

• Visual dependency graph (multiple formats)
• Text analysis of critical paths
• Risk assessment
• Recommendations for resilience improvements
• Outage impact matrix (if X fails, what breaks?)

Visualisation Examples

Text Output (ERP Downstream)

/dependency-graph system:ERP --direction downstream --depth all produces a structured text output showing:

• Direct consumers (1 hop) with volume, latency, criticality per edge
• Indirect consumers (2+ hops) with full path chains
• Risk analysis — cascading impact if root system fails, impact score, recovery time
• Single points of failure with mitigations

Mermaid Output (Enterprise Graph)

/dependency-graph all --direction both --visualization mermaid

Mermaid Output:

graph TB
    subgraph Sources["Source Systems"]
        ERP["ERP System<br/>Enterprise Resource Planning<br/>Critical"]
        THIRDPARTY["Third-party APIs<br/>EDI<br/>High"]
    end

    subgraph Integration["Integration Layer"]
        KAFKA["Kafka<br/>Event Bus<br/>High"]
        DATAPLATFORM["Data Platform<br/>Integration Hub<br/>Critical"]
        APIGW["API Gateway<br/>API Management<br/>High"]
    end

    subgraph Analytics["Analytics Layer"]
        DW["Data Warehouse<br/>Analytics Store<br/>High"]
        MDM["Master Data<br/>MDM<br/>Medium"]
    end

    subgraph Consumption["Consumption"]
        TABLEAU["Tableau<br/>BI<br/>Medium"]
        LOOKER["Looker<br/>BI<br/>High"]
        USERS["End Users<br/>API Consumers"]
    end

    ERP -->|Real-time| KAFKA
    ERP -->|Batch| DATAPLATFORM
    ERP -->|APIs| APIGW
    THIRDPARTY -->|Batch| DATAPLATFORM
    THIRDPARTY -->|APIs| APIGW

    KAFKA -->|Stream| DATAPLATFORM
    DATAPLATFORM -->|Analytics| DW
    DATAPLATFORM -->|APIs| APIGW

    DW -->|Query| TABLEAU
    DW -->|Query| LOOKER
    MDM -->|Master Data| DW

    APIGW -->|Access| USERS
    TABLEAU -->|Dashboards| USERS
    LOOKER -->|Dashboards| USERS

    classDef critical fill:#ff4444,stroke:#cc0000,color:#fff
    classDef high fill:#ffaa00,stroke:#ff8800,color:#fff
    classDef medium fill:#4499ff,stroke:#2277dd,color:#fff

    class ERP,DATAPLATFORM critical
    class KAFKA,APIGW,DW,LOOKER high
    class TABLEAU,MDM medium

Analysis Report Sections

The generated report includes:

1. Executive Summary — Architecture health score (connectivity, redundancy, resilience, scalability), critical findings (SPOFs), prioritised recommendations
2. System Criticality Ranking — Tier 1 (business critical), Tier 2 (enterprise critical), Tier 3 (department critical) with upstream/downstream counts, recovery times, recommended SLAs
3. Failure Impact Matrix — Per-system cascading failure analysis: immediate (0-5 min), short-term (5-30 min), long-term (30+ min) impacts with mitigations and affected system counts
4. Critical Path Analysis — Highest business-impact paths with latency, criticality, dependencies, and SPOFs per hop
5. Resilience Recommendations — Prioritised actions (P1 critical, P2 high, P3 medium) with current state, gap, recommendation, cost, implementation timeline
6. Dependency Graph Visualisation — Multiple formats (ASCII, Mermaid, D3) with critical paths highlighted, SPOFs circled, failover paths dashed, criticality colour-coding

Advanced Options

Filter by Criticality

/dependency-graph --criticality critical

Show only critical systems and their dependencies.

Show Cycles (Circular Dependencies)

/dependency-graph --show-cycles

Highlights any circular dependencies (rare in well-designed systems):

Warning: Circular dependency detected!
  A → B → C → A
  Recommendation: Break cycle

Calculate Shortest Paths

/dependency-graph system:ERP system:Tableau --show-paths

Show all paths from ERP to Tableau:

Shortest Path (3 hops):
  ERP → Data Platform → Data Warehouse → Tableau (latency: 4+ hours)

Alternative Paths:
  None (single path)

Network Statistics

/dependency-graph --statistics

Calculates graph density, average path length, central nodes (hubs), and isolated clusters.

Integration with Other Skills

The /dependency-graph skill works with:

• /impact-analysis - Analyze impact of system failures
• /architecture-report - Include dependency analysis section
• /system-sync - Update graph when dependencies change
• /cost-optimization - Identify redundant connections to eliminate

Output Formats

Format	Description
Text (ASCII)	Tree-style dependency list (e.g., ERP ├── Kafka │ └── Data Platform)
Mermaid	Embeddable in markdown and Obsidian Canvas
D3 Interactive	HTML force-directed graph (clickable, draggable, zoomable)
GraphML	Export for Gephi, Neo4j, or custom tools

Next Steps

After generating dependency graph:

1. Review with architecture/security teams
2. Prioritize resilience improvements
3. Create projects for priority 1 recommendations
4. Update disaster recovery runbooks based on findings
5. Schedule quarterly dependency reviews
6. Monitor actual outage impact vs. predicted

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Invoke with: /dependency-graph [system]

Example: /dependency-graph all → Enterprise dependency graph showing all systems and critical paths