Golden Path
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A Golden Path is the recommended, well-supported way to do something in your organization. Need a new service? Follow the Golden Path template. Need a database? Use the Golden Path provisioning. You CAN go off-path, but you lose the paved road, guardrails, and support.
Real Talk
Golden paths (or paved roads) are opinionated, well-maintained workflows and templates provided by platform teams. They encode organizational best practices for service creation, deployment, monitoring, and operations. Developers who follow golden paths get automated compliance, security, and operational support.
When You'll Hear This
"The golden path template gives you a service with CI/CD, monitoring, and alerting out of the box." / "Going off the golden path means you maintain your own build pipeline — are you sure?"
Related Terms
Convention Over Configuration
Convention Over Configuration means frameworks make assumptions about what you want so you write less config.
Developer Portal
A Developer Portal is a one-stop shop for everything developers need: API docs, service catalog, onboarding guides, templates, and tools.
Internal Developer Platform
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is the self-service layer that lets developers deploy, monitor, and manage their apps without bugging the ops team.
Platform Team
A Platform Team builds internal tools and infrastructure so product teams can ship faster.