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Backstage is an open-source framework for building Internal Developer Portals (IDPs). It stands out because of its open-source community, familiar technology stack, and a plugin-first architecture that makes it highly extensible and easy to customize.
A slide titled "Backstage – Introduction" showing an orange circle labeled "IDP" with arrows pointing to three web-page icons below and a stacked logo above. It visually represents an IDP distributing to multiple applications.
Key technical choices:
  • Frontend: React
  • Backend: Node.js (Express-based server) This combination means most JavaScript developers can extend and customize Backstage with minimal ramp-up.
A slide titled "Backstage – Benefits" showing a central Backstage logo connected to React (Frontend Library) on the left and Node.js (Backend Library) on the right. Labels above and below read "Open source" and "Highly customizable."
Out of the box, Backstage includes several core capabilities that are essential for an IDP:
  • Software catalog (inventory of services, packages, APIs, applications)
  • Scaffolding templates for consistent project creation
  • Built-in documentation via TechDocs
  • Unified, extensible search across catalog and docs
  • Plugin-based architecture (modular features and integrations)
Below we examine each of these features in detail. Software catalog The software catalog centralizes your organization’s software entities and metadata: owners, lifecycle (production/staging), type, and relationships. It enables navigation from a component to its documentation, owners, and dependent services.
A screenshot of a software catalog UI titled "example-website," showing an About panel with metadata (owner, lifecycle, type) on the left and a Relations panel on the right with a small graph of connected components.
Backstage can automatically parse entity metadata (YAML descriptors) and generate a relations graph that surfaces dependencies and service ownership. This improves incident response, impact analysis, and governance. Templating (Scaffolding) Backstage templates automate the repetitive steps of new-project onboarding: creating repositories, adding CI/CD, scaffolding code, applying linters and tests, provisioning infrastructure, and granting access. Templates enforce standards and reduce manual setup time.
A presentation slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates" that highlights "Standardization" and lists three bullet points about templates helping consistency, onboarding, and smoother transitions. The right side features a decorative turquoise curved path graphic with a circular accent.
You can author templates per language, framework, or deployment pattern (Node.js, Java, Python, React, microservices with API gateways, etc.). Developers simply complete a short form (name, owner, repo, target platform) to scaffold a project.
A presentation slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates" showing several service template cards (Example Node.js, Java, nodejs api w/ api-gateway, Python, React) with "choose" buttons and user:guest icons.
Example: a Python template wizard where the user selects the compute platform (EC2/ECS/EKS/Lambda), fills metadata, and clicks scaffold.
A UI screenshot titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates" showing a "Python Template" setup wizard with a four-step progress bar (Fill in some steps, Choose a location, Deploy, Review) and "ec2" listed as the compute platform. Navigation "BACK" and "NEXT" buttons appear at the bottom.
Under the hood, templates can:
  • Create a GitHub repository populated with an initial codebase that follows organizational best practices.
  • Add CI/CD configuration, linters, and developer tooling.
  • Optionally provision and deploy to infrastructure (for example, EC2).
A slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features — Templates" showing a GitHub logo and a "New Repository created" icon. An arrow leads to an AWS EC2 chip icon and a rocket icon labeled "Deploys the application," illustrating an automated deployment workflow.
Templates are flexible and can be customized for organization-specific frameworks like Next.js, Laravel, Django, or any internal stack. Documentation (TechDocs) Backstage surfaces documentation close to the code using the TechDocs plugin. The recommended pattern is to keep docs in the same repository (e.g., a docs/ folder or README.md). TechDocs uses MkDocs to convert Markdown into browsable HTML that Backstage renders inline.
A screenshot of a web UI titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Docs" showing a component/service page for "shopping-cart." The page displays Overview tabs, an About panel with "View Techdocs" and metadata (description, owner, lifecycle, tags) and a Relations panel.
TechDocs typically uses MkDocs (for example with the mkdocs-material theme). Projects must include standard MkDocs configuration (like mkdocs.yml) and Markdown files in the repo for Backstage to render the documentation.
Recommended examples to include in your repo: README example:
Small JavaScript example in the same repo:
Search Backstage provides a unified, extensible search index that can include:
  • Catalog entities and metadata
  • TechDocs content (rendered Markdown)
  • External content via integrations (Confluence, Stack Overflow, vendor data sources)
This lets developers find services, docs, and knowledge from a single interface.
A presentation slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Search" showing a teal stacked-logo on the left and a blue search ribbon with icons for Search, Catalog, and Docs on the right. The slide is branded with a small "© Copyright KodeKloud" in the bottom-left.
Plugins Plugins are Backstage’s primary extension mechanism. Core features (catalog, templates, TechDocs, search) are implemented as plugins, and all new integrations follow the same pattern. Plugins fetch data, transform it, and render UI components.
A screenshot of a software UI titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Plugins" showing a grid of dark-themed plugin cards. Each card has an icon, a short description (e.g., APIs with 3scale, AI Assistant, Airbrake, analytics modules) and an "Explore" button.
You can:
  • Install community and vendor plugins
  • Build custom plugins to integrate internal systems (monitoring, billing, ticketing)
  • Replace core functionality by swapping or extending the corresponding plugin
Feature Summary Links and references Summary Backstage is an open-source framework for building internal developer portals (IDPs). It uses a familiar stack (React + Node.js), provides essential features out of the box (software catalog, templates, TechDocs, search), and uses a plugin-based architecture so you can extend or replace functionality consistently and modularly.

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