Build better developer portals with Spotify’s Backstage

Backstage, an open-source tool developed by Spotify's engineering team, is designed to create developer portals that streamline the organization of development tools, documentation, and processes, ultimately reducing the cognitive load on new developers. It operates as a monorepo using a combination of Node.js, TypeScript, React, Yarn, and Lerna to support its plugin architecture, allowing for independent plugin development and testing. The Backstage CLI facilitates the creation of new instances and plugins, while existing plugins can be easily integrated into custom setups. Despite being in its early stages, with the alpha version released in March 2020, Backstage offers a clean user interface and thoughtful documentation, with potential for significant impact in developer tooling. The platform encourages users to customize and expand its capabilities by building or integrating plugins, exemplified by the integration of a Tech Radar plugin that visualizes an organization's standardized technologies. Future deployment options include containerizing instances as Docker containers, as demonstrated by Spotify's own implementation.