| user-invocable | false |
| name | backend |
| description | Backend engineering judgment, distilled from a stronger model - invoke when CHOOSING a tech stack, language, database, queue, or architecture; designing a service, API, business logic, or schema; making a system production-ready (observability, failure handling, security); or reviewing server-side code and judging codebase health. Scenario-driven stack tradeoffs, logic-design rules, data discipline, production floors, and a rot catalog (the early signs of unmaintainable code). |
Backend — stack, logic, data, operations, rot
Rule content lives in the five files below; this SKILL.md only routes
(doctrine/04-maintenance.md governs edits to this bundle too).
Route by moment
| You are about to… | Read (in this folder) |
|---|
| Pick a language / framework / DB / queue / architecture, or judge a stack proposal | stack.md |
| Design or review a service, module, API, or piece of business logic | logic.md |
| Design a schema, transaction, migration, or cache | data.md |
| Ship to production — observability, config, failure modes, security, jobs, limits | operate.md |
| Review existing code, plan a refactor, or explain why a codebase feels dangerous | rot.md |
Starting a new system usually means stack.md → logic.md → data.md, in that order:
stack only after the scenario interrogation, endpoints only after the data model.
Scope and neighbors
Server-side engineering judgment only. Whether to delegate and when to escalate →
doctrine; how to investigate/verify anything → methods; the visual/UI layer →
frontend.
The stance
The one test governing the whole bundle is logic.md's opening line — is change still
cheap and safe — and rot.md's opening defines the failure mode and the ugly-but-safe
tiebreak. Read those two openings before judging any backend.
