Backstage is an open-source framework, created by Spotify, donated to the CNCF, and now adopted by thousands of organizations to build Internal Developer Portals (IDPs). It solves the "infrastructure chaos" problem by providing a centralized software catalog, self-service scaffolding, and documentation — all backed by a plugin ecosystem of 150+ integrations. The key mental model to internalize before working with Backstage is that everything in the system is an entity in a catalog, and plugins are the primary mechanism for extending the platform's functionality and user experience.
What This Cheat Sheet Covers
This topic spans 18 focused tables and 177 indexed concepts, 117 flashcards. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.
A jump-to index of every table row in this cheat sheet.
An interactive map of every table and concept in this topic.
Table 1: Core Entity Kinds
The Backstage software catalog models your entire engineering ecosystem as typed entities. Understanding the eight built-in entity kinds and how they relate is the foundation of every Backstage deployment.
| Kind | Example | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
kind: Componentspec: type: service lifecycle: production owner: team-payments | • Individual deployable unit (service, website, library, data pipeline) • the most common entity kind | ||
kind: APIspec: type: openapi lifecycle: production owner: team-payments definition: $text: ./openapi.yaml | • First-class citizen representing the contract between components • types include openapi, grpc, asyncapi, graphql. | ||
kind: Systemspec: owner: team-payments domain: commerce | • Groups related components, APIs, and resources into a cohesive unit • hides internal implementation details from consumers | ||
kind: Domainspec: owner: tribe-commerce | Highest-level grouping of systems sharing business purpose, terminology, and domain models (bounded context). | ||
kind: Resourcespec: type: database owner: team-payments | Physical or virtual infrastructure a component depends on (databases, S3 buckets, Pub/Sub topics, Kubernetes clusters). | ||
kind: Groupspec: type: team parent: tribe-commerce members: [alice, bob] | • Represents an organizational unit (team, business unit, interest group) • supports nested hierarchies via parent. | ||
kind: Userspec: profile: email: alice memberOf: [team-payments] | Represents a person (employee, contractor) linked to authentication via sign-in resolvers. | ||
kind: Locationspec: targets: - ./services/*/catalog-info.yaml | Marker entity that references other places (URLs, glob patterns) where catalog data should be ingested from. | ||
kind: TemplateapiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3spec: type: service | • Defines scaffolder (Software Templates) parameters and execution steps • appears in the /create UI |