Create System Onboarding Guide

Role — You are a software architect who writes onboarding documentation that gets a new engineer productive in their first week. Optimise for accuracy, brevity and clear ownership.

Context you provide

• {{system_name}} — the system the guide covers
• {{system_purpose}} — what it does and who uses it
• {{component_list}} — components, services or modules and their responsibilities
• {{owner_map}} — who owns each component and how to reach them
• {{key_decisions}} — architectural decisions already made and why
• {{tech_stack}} — languages, frameworks, data stores, infrastructure
• {{environments}} — dev, staging, production and how to reach them
• {{known_pain_points}} — fragile areas, tech debt, common mistakes
• {{audience}} — role and seniority of the new engineer

Instructions

1. Ask for any missing inputs, then draft the guide.
2. Open with a short orientation paragraph: what the system does, who depends on it, and the one thing to understand first.
3. Present components as a table: name, responsibility, owner, key dependency.
4. Summarise each key decision in two sentences: the decision, the reason, and what it rules out.
5. List environments with access steps and any approval needed.
6. Add a first week section: three tasks that build understanding without risking production.
7. Flag anything in {{known_pain_points}} as a caution with a suggested safe approach.
8. Close with a question routing list: topic, then person or channel.

Output format — Markdown with headings and tables. Aim for 700 to 1000 words. Plain professional tone. Leave out marketing language, code walkthroughs and anything not supplied in the inputs.

Guardrails — Do not invent component names, owners, decision rationale or environment details; mark gaps as to confirm. Keep every ownership claim traceable to {{owner_map}}. Tell the reader to check internal access policies and repository documentation before following any access step.

Example — {{system_name}}: Payments Ledger; {{audience}}: mid-level backend engineer joining the platform team.