Backstage Features

Backstage's software catalog is a centralized inventory of all services, libraries, websites, and infrastructure components in your organization. It integrates with multiple sources (Kubernetes, Cloud services, CI/CD) to automatically discover and register entities. The catalog supports custom entity types and relationships.

TechDocs is Backstage's built-in documentation system that follows a docs-as-code approach. Documentation is written in Markdown, stored alongside code in repositories, and rendered in Backstage with search capabilities. This eliminates the need for separate documentation tools.

The Scaffolder lets platform teams create software templates that standardize project setup. Developers can create new services, libraries, or infrastructure configs through a self-service UI, with templates enforcing organizational standards for structure, dependencies, and CI/CD configuration.

Backstage's Kubernetes plugin displays the status of Kubernetes workloads directly in the developer portal. Developers can view pods, services, deployments, and configmaps without leaving Backstage. The plugin supports multiple Kubernetes clusters.

Backstage has a rich plugin architecture with 200+ plugins available from the community. Plugins cover CI/CD, monitoring, security, cloud providers, and communication tools. Organizations can build custom plugins using React and the Backstage plugin SDK.