🛠️ Backstage Core Features Overview: 5 Weapons to Boost Developer Productivity

Jul 8, 2026

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Hello!

We’ve previously learned what Backstage is and why it’s needed. Now, we’re going to delve into the 5 core features of Backstage that developers most frequently access and use in the field. Let’s explore together how these features interact to create a ‘Golden Path’! 🌟

📌 Learning Objectives for This Post

After reading this article, you will fully understand the following:

Understanding the concept and operating principles of the Software Catalog 📑
How to create automated projects using the Scaffolder 🏗️
Grasping the extensibility of the Search function 🔍
Learning how TechDocs enables ‘documentation as code’ 📝
Establishing a portal customization strategy using Plugins 🧩

1. The Beginning of Everything: Software Catalog 📑

The Software Catalog is Backstage’s most critical feature and the foundation for all other functionalities.

Purpose: Maps all scattered software assets within an organization, such as websites, APIs, libraries, and resources, to a central directory.
How it works: Details for each entity are defined in YAML files stored alongside the source code. This ensures that catalog information remains up-to-date when the code is updated.
Key Benefits: * Clearly tracks asset ownership and dependencies.
Helps clean up the system by identifying ‘orphaned entities’ that lack a parent entity.
Becomes a source for extracting insights like security warnings or maturity metrics.

2. Standardized Start: Scaffolder 🏗️

This feature provides the most perfect answer to the question, “Where do I start?” when a new team member joins.

Core Function: Executes predefined software templates to instantly create repositories with skeleton code and completed configurations.
Recommending the Golden Path: Provides templates with built-in CI/CD, analytics tools, etc., allowing new developers to have a deployment-ready service with just a few clicks.
Integration with Catalog: Services created with the Scaffolder are automatically registered in the Catalog, creating a virtuous cycle that increases discoverability.

3. Documentation as Code: TechDocs 📝

Documentation is important, but managing it is difficult. TechDocs solves this with a ‘Documentation-as-code’ approach.

How it works: By managing Markdown files alongside source code, Backstage fetches them and converts them into beautiful static pages.
Developer-Friendly: Developers can focus solely on writing Markdown without worrying about the documentation publishing process. TechDocs automatically configures navigation menus and UI elements.

4. Ensuring Infrastructure Visibility: Kubernetes ☸️

Backstage provides a plugin that allows developers to directly visualize the cluster status of each service.

Status Check: Quickly grasp the health status of clusters in development, staging, and production environments at a glance.
Catalog Integration: Based on service information registered in the Catalog, it directly fetches data from external cluster providers like GKE and displays it.

5. Ecosystem Integrated Search: Search 🔍

As an organization grows, the speed at which necessary information is found determines productivity.

Flexible Extensibility: While it primarily supports ElasticSearch, you can integrate a search engine that suits your organization’s preference.
Integrated Search: Collects and indexes data not only from Catalog information but also from TechDocs, Stack Overflow, etc., via a Collator, allowing for a single, unified search.

🧩 Infinite Extensibility Through Plugins

All the features mentioned above are actually core plugins maintained by the Backstage team. However, the true value of Backstage comes from community plugins.

Vendor Integration: You can bring PagerDuty incident information or ArgoCD status into the portal.
Custom Plugins: If your organization has specific internal requirements, you can write your own plugins to extend functionality.

By effectively utilizing the 5 features summarized today, your organization can also build a powerful development culture like Spotify. In the next chapter, we will delve deeper into how to actually configure the most important Software Catalog! 🚀