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In this lesson we walk through Backstage and inspect its primary features: the Catalog, entities (Components, APIs, Groups, Users, Systems), TechDocs (documentation), templates and scaffolding, search, and Settings. With Backstage running you can navigate the UI to discover ownership, relationships, source links, and documentation for your organization’s software.

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Home / My Company Catalog

The Home page opens to the “My Company Catalog” — the central index of every software entity your organization manages. Use the catalog to discover components, APIs, systems, groups, and users, and to filter views by kind, owner, lifecycle, or other metadata. In this demo instance there is a single registered application: example-website. The catalog card shows metadata such as owner (a group named guests in this demo), kind (Component), component type (Website), and lifecycle (Experimental). You can switch filters to list Users, Groups, or APIs as needed.
A web application dashboard titled "My Company Catalog" with a left sidebar menu and a filter dropdown set to "Component." The main pane shows an "All Components (1)" list containing one item named "example-website."
Click the example-website card to open its component details page.

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Component details and relations

The component details page combines overview metadata, navigation to source or docs, and a relations graph that visualizes ownership, system membership, provided and consumed APIs, and subcomponents. The relations graph is one of Backstage’s most powerful discovery tools for understanding architecture and team responsibilities.
A screenshot of the Backstage web UI showing a component page for "example-website," with an About panel on the left and a Relations graph on the right. The left sidebar shows navigation items like Home, APIs, and Docs.
A typical component entity in Backstage looks like this:
In the relations graph for this component you’ll see:
  • Ownership: group:guests
  • System membership: examples
  • Provided API: example-grpc-api
  • Subcomponents (if any)
Clicking an API node in the graph navigates to the API entity page. You can also filter the catalog by API kind to find API entries directly.

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API entity page and API definitions

The API entity view displays owner, lifecycle, relations, and—where available—the API definition itself (for example, gRPC proto files or OpenAPI specs). Backstage renders common API formats to make exploration and onboarding easy.
A screenshot of the Backstage web UI displaying an API entity page titled "example-grpc-api." The page shows an About panel with owner/lifecycle details on the left and a Relations graph on the right.
Example gRPC (proto3) service definition:
For REST APIs, Backstage will surface OpenAPI (Swagger) specs or other supported API documentation formats in the same view, enabling quick inspection and navigation.

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Home overview, users, and groups

The Home tab provides quick access to every entity type. Key points:
  • Users: lists individual users (e.g., guest).
  • Groups: shows groups and the components they own — useful to understand team responsibilities.
  • Ownership in Backstage must reference either a user or a group string, for example user:alice or group:frontend-team.
Ownership must be assigned to an individual (user:...) or a group (group:...). Use consistent naming to keep ownership and the relations graph accurate.
TechDocs (Backstage documentation) is available from component and API pages via the docs icon, or from the global Docs view. The top search bar indexes both catalog metadata and TechDocs content so you can find components, APIs, teams, and documentation from a single place. Searching for the term “example” in this demo returns the example website, the example API, and any TechDocs pages that contain the term.
Screenshot of a Backstage documentation search overlay showing results for the query "example" (e.g., "Example Node.js Template", "example-website"). The app has a dark left sidebar with navigation items like Home, APIs, and Docs.

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Create — Templates and scaffolding

The Create workflow launches Backstage templates used to scaffold new projects (applications, libraries, services) consistently. Templates collect inputs (project name, owner, repository location) and provision code and metadata according to your organization’s standards. In this demo you’ll find an Example Node.js template.
A screenshot of the Backstage web interface on the "Create a new component" page showing a Templates section with an "Example Node.js Template" card. The page also shows a left navigation menu and a "Register Existing Component" button.
Templates are a core automation feature — explore them to standardize onboarding, CI/CD, repository layout, and scaffolding across teams.

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Settings, appearance, and authentication

The Settings page controls UI-level preferences: appearance (Light/Dark theme), profile details, authentication providers, and feature flags. These options let individuals and organizations tune Backstage behavior and sign-in methods.
Screenshot of the Backstage web app Settings page, showing a user Profile card and Backstage Identity panel on the left and Appearance options (Light/Dark theme toggle and pin sidebar) on the right, with a dark left navigation menu.
Adjust settings to match your personal preferences or organization defaults (e.g., default theme and sidebar behavior).

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Stars, Owned filter, and quick access

  • Star frequently used components to access them quickly (Show starred components).
  • The Owned filter shows only components owned by your user or group. If your account isn’t a member of any group, the Owned filter may be disabled until group membership is configured.
Backstage catalog pages are addressable via URL parameters so you can link directly to filtered views or specific entity pages. Example filtered catalog query (replace the host and parameters to match your installation): 147.182.170.10:3000/catalog?filters%5Bkind%5D=api&filters%5Buser%5D=all&limit=20 Table — Common catalog entity kinds and examples:

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Wrap-up

You’ve explored the Backstage Catalog, component and API entity pages, relations graphs, TechDocs search, templates/scaffolding, and settings. Next steps:
  • Open a component or API and inspect its relations graph.
  • Browse TechDocs content and try the global search.
  • Create a new component using a template to experience the scaffolding workflow.
Further hands-on exploration will deepen your understanding of Backstage and how it centralizes software metadata, documentation, and developer workflows.

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