mongodb-schema-design

SKILL.md

MongoDB Schema Design

Data modeling patterns and anti-patterns for MongoDB, maintained by MongoDB. Bad schema is the root cause of most MongoDB performance and cost issues—queries and indexes cannot fix a fundamentally wrong model.

When to Apply

Reference these guidelines when:

Designing a new MongoDB schema from scratch

Migrating from SQL/relational databases to MongoDB

Reviewing existing data models for performance issues

Troubleshooting slow queries or growing document sizes

Deciding between embedding and referencing

Modeling relationships (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many)

Implementing tree/hierarchical structures

Seeing Atlas Schema Suggestions or Performance Advisor warnings

Hitting the 16MB document limit

Adding schema validation to existing collections

Quick Reference