AbstractWe investigate synchronized hyperedge replacement (SHR) as general framework for distributed programming and system design. We propose a slender version of SHR which dramaticaly reduces the mathematical overhead of the original proposal [G. Ferrari, U. Montanari, and E. Tuosto. A LTS semantics of ambients via graph synchronization with mobility. ITCS, 2001] and use it to interpret the distributed CCS [J. Riely and M. Hennessy. Distributed Processes and Location Failures. Theoretical Computer Science, 266:693–735, 2001] and the calculus of Mobile Ambients [L. Cardelli and A.D. Gordon. Mobile Ambients. Theoretical Computer Science, 1(240):177–213, 2000] in a uniform semantic framework. The encodings are bisimulations. A tool for supporting distributed system design and analysis is presented. The tool, which adopts the slender SHR as intermediate language, integrates model checking techniques within the framework of (distributed) program development.