What Golden Paths Are#

A golden path is a pre-built, opinionated workflow that gets a developer from zero to a production-ready artifact with minimal decisions. The term comes from Spotify’s internal platform work. Netflix calls them “paved roads.” The idea is the same: provide a well-maintained, well-tested default path that handles 80% of use cases, while allowing teams to go off-road when they have legitimate reasons.

A golden path is not a mandate. It is a recommendation backed by automation. Create a new Go microservice using the golden path and you get a repository with CI/CD, Kubernetes manifests, observability, and a Backstage catalog entry — working in minutes. The golden path removes the 40+ decisions a developer would otherwise need to make.

The Measurement Problem#

Measuring developer experience wrong is worse than not measuring at all. Lines of code, commit counts, and story points per sprint all create perverse incentives — developers game what gets measured. Good metrics measure outcomes (how fast does code reach production?) and perceptions (do developers feel productive?) without punishing individuals.

The goal is identifying systemic friction in tools, processes, and the platform. Never to evaluate individual developers.

Designing Agent-Ready Projects#

An “agent-ready” project is just a well-documented project. Every practice that helps an agent — clear conventions, explicit commands, tracked progress, documented decisions — also helps a new team member, a future-you who forgot the details, or a contractor picking up the project for the first time.

The difference is that humans can ask follow-up questions and gradually build context through conversation. Agents cannot. They need it written down, in the right place, at the right level of detail. Projects that meet this bar are better for everyone.