Fullstack Engineering Standards
Documentation
The reference both frontend and backend teams are held to. Written to remove ambiguity, not just document tradeoffs: every section ends with a rule you can act on.
What this document is not
This is not a Next.js-specific guide, and it does not cover deployment or CI/CD, which a separate department owns. Outside of Section 2, it is written at the level of principles and decision criteria, so it keeps working if the stack changes. See the introduction for the full scope.
Foundations
Purpose, scope, and how to propose a change to this standard.
1. IntroductionSelection criteria, the current approved stack, and the polyglot policy.
2. Technology Selection & Current StackMonorepo vs multi-repo criteria and structure by layer responsibility.
3. Repository & Project StructurePR checklist, linting principles, and the commit and branching convention.
4. Code Quality & CollaborationFrontend & backend
Component strategy, styling conventions, forms, and accessibility baseline.
5. Frontend & UI GuidelinesService boundaries, persistence standards, and data modeling.
6. Backend & Data ArchitectureArchitecture & principles
When to use internal RPC, REST, GraphQL, and event-driven messaging.
7. System Architecture & Service CommunicationDesign for failure, SOLID, design patterns, YAGNI, and feature flagging.
8. Engineering Principles & Design PatternsServer vs client state, caching, validation, search, and file handling.
9. Application State & Content HandlingOperations & quality
Consistent error shapes, UI error states, retries, and background jobs.
10. Error Handling & ResilienceEnv var rules, auth, input validation, secrets, and middleware standards.
11. SecurityAsset optimization, bundle budgets, code splitting, and query performance.
12. Performance GuidelinesTest scope by layer, mocking convention, smoke tests, and coverage.
13. Testing Strategy