Poesis
If you need a developer home page — catalog, templates, docs — the developer-portal category is the right tool, and it can feed Poesis.
A Backstage alternative: definitions that govern, beyond the catalog
Internal developer portals like Backstage gave platform teams a service catalog and a home for golden paths. Poesis for IT addresses the layer a catalog does not: what services are *obliged* to be — typed definitions with lifecycle, ownership, and machine-evaluable obligations.
Credit where due
What the internal developer portal category does well.
The developer-portal category — of which Backstage is the reference open-source example — excels at developer experience: a searchable service catalog, scaffolding templates, and plugin-based tooling integration. As a developer home page, the category serves that intent well.
Where the approaches differ
Description versus definition.
The difference is descriptive versus definitional. A catalog entry describes a service for humans browsing it; a governed definition types it, binds obligations to it, and is evaluated against how the service actually behaves. The two can coexist — a catalog is a natural sourcing input.
| Dimension | Developer-portal approach | Poesis for IT |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog entry | Metadata registered per service, maintained by teams | Typed definitions sourced from code, contracts, SBOMs, and infrastructure — evidence-backed, confidence-scored |
| Governance | Conventions and scorecards layered on top | Directives and Norms are first-class governed definitions with lifecycle and deterministic verdicts |
| Audience | Developers navigating the platform | Every IT profile — architects, ops, security, compliance — and AI agents, on one governed model |
| Compliance | Out of scope | Continuous appraisal against GDPR, NIS2, DORA, ISO — computed from the same model |
| Coexistence | — | A portal catalog can serve as a knowledge source feeding the governed model |
An honest answer
When to choose which.
If you need the governance layer — obligations with owners, posture computed continuously, definitions AI agents can act on — that is Poesis for IT, alongside or above your portal.
Backstage is less an alternative than a neighbor: the catalog teams already maintain is a natural knowledge source for the governed model, and golden paths can consume governed definitions. Keep the portal — Poesis governs what it describes.
Backstage is an open-source project created by Spotify and hosted by the CNCF. Poesis is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Spotify or the CNCF.