Prompt file imported from cdalsoniii/brightpath-coder (.cursor/commands/capacity-plan.md). Copyright stays with the author.

Capacity Plan

Overview

Create a capacity plan with growth projections and scaling triggers based on current resource utilization metrics, historical traffic trends, and business projections.

Steps

1. Gather current resource utilization metrics

   • Collect CPU, memory, storage, and network utilization across all services
   • Extract metrics from monitoring systems (Prometheus, CloudWatch, etc.)
   • Calculate average, peak, and p95 utilization over the last 30 days
   • Document current instance types, counts, and resource allocations
   • Identify current bottlenecks and resource constraints

2. Model traffic growth based on historical trends and business projections

   • Analyze historical traffic patterns (requests per second, concurrent users)
   • Calculate monthly growth rate from historical data
   • Incorporate business projections (user acquisition targets, feature launches)
   • Account for seasonal patterns and peak traffic events
   • Generate growth scenarios: conservative, expected, and aggressive (3, 6, 12 month horizons)

3. Identify resource bottlenecks at projected load

   • Calculate resource requirements for each growth scenario using resource profiles
   • Map projected traffic to CPU, memory, storage, and network needs
   • Identify which resources will become bottlenecks first
   • Calculate database capacity needs (size, IOPS, connections)
   • Assess connection pool sizing and database replica requirements

4. Define scaling triggers and auto-scaling policies

   • Set target utilization bands (60-75% CPU, 70-80% memory)
   • Configure auto-scaling triggers accounting for scale-up latency
   • Define horizontal scaling policies for stateless services
   • Plan vertical scaling approach for stateful services
   • Document manual scaling procedures for critical resources

5. Calculate infrastructure cost at projected scale

   • Estimate compute costs for projected instance counts and types
   • Calculate storage costs based on growth projections
   • Estimate network and data transfer costs
   • Factor in reserved instance savings opportunities
   • Generate cost projections for each growth scenario (3, 6, 12 months)

Checklist

• Current resource utilization metrics collected and documented
• Traffic growth model created with multiple scenarios (conservative, expected, aggressive)
• Resource bottlenecks identified for each growth scenario
• Scaling triggers and auto-scaling policies defined with latency considerations
• Infrastructure cost projections calculated for 3, 6, and 12 month horizons
• Capacity headroom calculated for failover scenarios (lose 1 of N replicas)
• Capacity plan document created with recommendations and action items

References

• Rule: 065-capacity-planning.mdc
• Rule: performance-scalability-standards.mdc
• Plan: capacity_planning_cost_optimization.plan.md
• Skill: capacity-planning/SKILL.md