| name | golden-path |
| description | Create and maintain a paved or golden path that turns an approved common workload pattern into a secure, observable, supportable, self-service default without blocking justified exceptions. |
Golden Path
Use when teams repeatedly create similar services, jobs, applications, or runtime integrations and benefit from one well-supported default path.
Procedure
- Choose a genuinely common workload and define the end-to-end outcome the path should make routine, including creation, local development, CI, deployment, observability, ownership, and retirement where relevant.
- Collect existing successful patterns and failure history before standardizing. Avoid declaring one team's accidental implementation the organization-wide default without evidence.
- Define the defaults and guarantees the path provides: repository/service shape, identity, configuration, secrets, deployment, health, logging/metrics, policy checks, documentation, and support boundaries.
- Automate the repeatable mechanics while keeping important parameters explicit. Generated output should be inspectable and maintainable after creation.
- Make the path discoverable and self-service with a small entry surface and clear examples. The first successful use should not require private coaching from the platform team.
- Define escape hatches for workloads that cannot fit the default. Require an explicit reason and ownership rather than forcing consumers into a harmful abstraction.
- Version the path and decide how existing consumers receive fixes or migrations. Do not assume regenerating a template safely updates live projects.
- Validate the path by creating a representative workload from scratch and taking it through build, test, deploy, observe, change, and recover workflows.
- Measure adoption, time-to-first-working-change, drift, support volume, bypass reasons, and failure rate; use these signals to evolve or retire the path.
Decision rules
- A golden path is a supported default, not a mandatory cage.
- Standardize proven repetition, not speculative future architecture.
- Generated scaffolding without lifecycle support becomes copied debt.
- Security and observability defaults should be usable without making ordinary consumers understand every platform implementation detail.
Quality gate
The path is ready when a representative consumer can independently create and operate the common workload with safe defaults, the resulting artifacts remain understandable, exceptions have a legitimate route, updates have a lifecycle strategy, and evidence shows the path reduces repeated effort or errors.
