Internal Developer Platform Architecture
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Core Building Blocks
- Service catalog (ownership, links, on-call)
- Templates/scaffolding (golden paths)
- Provisioning layer (IaC/GitOps)
- Policy layer (guardrails)
- Observability layer (default dashboards, alerts)
Define Interfaces, Not Internals
- Interface: “Create a service” → outputs repo + pipeline + runtime config
- Interface: “Expose HTTP” → outputs ingress + cert + WAF policy
Reference Workflow
Developer -> Template -> Repo created Repo -> CI -> Build + Scan + Sign Repo -> GitOps -> Deploy to cluster Observability -> Dashboards + Alerts + Runbooks
Operational Requirements
- Audit trail for every change
- Rollback story for platform components
- Clear ownership and escalation
Failure Modes
- Platform becomes monolith → keep interfaces modular (catalog, templates, policy).
- Hidden dependencies → document and version contracts.