Real systems · real documentation

Examples

The best way to learn arc42 is to see it in action: complete architecture documentation of real-world systems — free online, and in the arc42-by-Example books.

Online examples

HTML Sanity Checker

Verbose documentation of a Gradle plugin that checks HTML files for broken links and images. Created by Gernot Starke.

English Online docs Gradle plugin

DokChess

Verbose documentation of a chess engine, created by Stefan Zörner — a book (in German) describes how this example was written.

German Online docs Java

Biking

A real-world bike-activity tracker, documented by its author Michael Simons.

English Online docs Java Spring Boot

Gradle "Starschnitt"

A series of blog posts examining aspects of the Gradle build system in the context of arc42. Created by Stefan Zörner.

German Blog series Gradle

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In book form

arc42 by Example, 3rd edition book cover

arc42 by Example, 3rd edition contains several complete real-world architectures, documented with arc42: a chess engine, a huge CRM system, a web system tracking biking activities, and an extremely small menu-bar application. Written by Gernot Starke, Michael Simons, Stefan Zörner, Ralf D. Müller and Hendrik Lösch.

Each example starts from the problem domain and quality requirements, walks through context, solution strategy, building blocks and runtime scenarios, and explains the crosscutting concepts of the architecture and its implementation.

Read on Leanpub

For embedded systems and IoT, arc42 by Example Volume 2 by Peter Hruschka, Ivan Kostov and Wolfgang Reimesch adds two documented hardware/software co-design architectures.

Learn arc42 in a training

We teach arc42 and modern software architecture in iSAQB-certified Foundation trainings — on-site and remote. Upcoming dates:

Hands-on architecture training — most classes taught by Peter Hruschka and Gernot Starke, the creators of arc42 (dates with other trainers say so):

Next dates

All courses and dates: trainings.arc42.org · as of 4 Aug 2026

See all dates & register → Training details