Dev-Backend — Production-Grade Backend Engineering
Ownership boundary: This skill owns API design, app architecture, database optimization, error handling, middleware, queues, long-lived connections, and app-level observability/health hooks. Deployment strategy, rollback proof, rollout shape, SLOs, alert routing, incident response, and operational readiness gates are owned by
dev-devops. Backend exposes the app-level hooks that DevOps operational gates consume.
Build reliable, secure, and maintainable server-side applications. This skill is a routing role that activates by change-surface: whenever the work primarily touches APIs, servers, services, jobs, data access, schemas, migrations, or operational backend behavior, use this skill and then read the relevant references.
Before backend work, read dev for classification, fast paths, rule authority, family invariants, verification, and safety; current/public evidence follows its Conditional Routes.
Modular References
| Condition | Reference |
|---|---|
| C2 ordinary CRUD/resource slice | CRUD API alone suffices |
| New/changed API style or C3+ API work | API design |
| Versioning, deprecation, or API migration | API lifecycle |
| Stack detection, ambiguous technology, or architecture/protocol selection | Setup; C3+: Architecture |
| New endpoints, classes, or modules | Anti-slop |
| SSE/WebSocket, runtime timeouts/drain/request IDs, or async queues | Connections and queues |
| Layer placement, error mapping/Result, middleware order, or response contracts | Request contracts |
| Caching, observability, template evaluation, performance, SEO, handoff, or delivery checklist | Production delivery |
| Production/long-lived services | Observability, health checks |
| CPU-bound/untrusted work | Process isolation |
| Cache optimization | Caching patterns |
| Node/TypeScript, Python, or database work | Node, Python, database, respectively |
| ML deployment, RAG/LLM integration, or mobile APIs | ML serving, LLM integration, mobile API, respectively |
| Auth/input/security policy | cxc-dev-security |
| Deployment, analytics, frontend contracts, testing, RCA, or scaffolding | Handoff owners |
Read api-design.md + anti-slop-backend.md first, then the relevant stack file.
For C2 ordinary slices, crud-api.md alone suffices; read api-design.md/architecture.md for new API styles or C3+ work.
3. Error Handling
For error mapping and the conditional Result pattern, read Error handling.


