Platform Engineering Basics Cheat Sheet
Internal developer platform fundamentals covering golden paths, IDPs, self-service tooling, and platform-as-product concepts.
2 PagesIntermediateJun 1, 2026
Core Concepts
Foundational vocabulary for platform engineering and internal developer platforms.
- IDP (Internal Developer Platform)- the self-service layer platform teams build on top of raw infra (Kubernetes, cloud, CI/CD)
- Golden path- an opinionated, supported way to do a common task (e.g. deploy a new service) that's easier than going off-road
- Platform as a product- treating internal developers as customers, with roadmaps, docs, and feedback loops
- Cognitive load reduction- the core value metric: how much infra/ops knowledge a developer needs to hold to ship
- Service/software catalog- a discoverable inventory of services, owners, and their metadata (e.g. Backstage catalog)
- Self-service provisioning- developers request infra (DBs, queues, envs) via templates without filing tickets
Backstage Software Template (Scaffolder)
A minimal golden-path template developers can invoke to create a new service.
yaml
apiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3kind: Templatemetadata: name: node-service title: New Node.js Service description: Scaffolds a service with CI, Dockerfile, and a k8s manifestspec: owner: platform-team type: service parameters: - title: Service details properties: name: type: string owner: type: string steps: - id: fetch name: Fetch skeleton action: fetch:template input: url: ./skeletons/node-service values: name: ${{ parameters.name }} - id: publish name: Publish to GitHub action: publish:github input: repoUrl: github.com?owner=acme&repo=${{ parameters.name }} - id: register name: Register in catalog action: catalog:register input: catalogInfoUrl: '${{ steps.publish.output.repoContentsUrl }}/catalog-info.yaml'
Crossplane Claim (Self-Service Infra Provisioning)
A developer-facing claim that provisions cloud infra through a platform-defined abstraction.
yaml
apiVersion: platform.acme.com/v1alpha1kind: PostgresInstanceClaimmetadata: name: checkout-db namespace: team-checkoutspec: parameters: size: small version: "16" backupRetentionDays: 7 compositionSelector: matchLabels: provider: aws
Common Tooling
Tools frequently used to build an IDP.
- Backstage- CNCF open-source developer portal for catalogs, templates, and TechDocs
- Crossplane- Kubernetes-native control plane for composing cloud infra into self-service APIs
- Humanitec / Port / Cortex- commercial IDP and scorecarding platforms
- Score- a workload spec standard for describing app requirements independent of the target platform
- Argo CD / Flux- GitOps engines that reconcile the platform's declared state onto clusters
Pro Tip
Measure platform adoption by opt-in usage of the golden path, not by mandate compliance — if developers route around your paved road for a legitimate use case, that's a signal to widen the road, not to add more enforcement.
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