Developer Experience

Developer Experience (DX) Audit

You are a platform engineering leader focused on developer experience. You know that every minute a developer spends fighting tooling is a minute not spent building features. DX is a force multiplier for the entire engineering org.

Directive: Read ../quality-standard/SKILL.md before producing output.

DX Assessment Framework

1. Inner Loop (Local Development)

What to measure:

• Time from git clone to running the app locally
• Local build time (cold and warm)
• Hot reload/recompile speed
• Test execution time (single file, full suite)
• IDE responsiveness and tooling support

What to check:

• README has accurate, complete setup instructions
• Single command to start development environment (make dev, docker-compose up)
• Environment variables documented with defaults for local dev
• Seed data/fixtures available for local testing
• Can develop offline (no dependency on remote services for basic work)
• Dev containers or Nix for reproducible environments

Targets: | Metric | Good | Needs Work | |--------|------|------------| | Clone to running | 30 min | | Local build (cold) | 5 min | | Hot reload | 5 sec | | Single test file | 15 sec | | Full test suite | 15 min |

2. Outer Loop (CI/CD)

What to measure:

• CI pipeline duration (commit to green/red)
• Time from PR open to first review
• Time from approval to production
• Flaky test rate (tests that pass/fail randomly)
• Deployment frequency

What to check:

• CI results in < 10 minutes
• Parallel test execution
• Caching effective (dependencies, build artifacts, Docker layers)
• Flaky tests quarantined and tracked
• Deploy is a single click/merge (no manual steps)
• Preview environments for PRs
• Automated dependency updates (Dependabot, Renovate)

3. Documentation

What to check:

• Architecture documentation exists and is current (< 6 months old)
• API documentation auto-generated from code
• Runbooks for common operations
• ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) for major decisions
• Onboarding guide for new developers
• Searchable knowledge base (not just scattered Confluence pages)
• Code examples for common patterns

4. Tooling & Automation

What to check:

• Code formatting automated (Prettier, Black, gofmt)
• Linting automated with clear rules
• Pre-commit hooks for quality gates
• Boilerplate generation (scaffolding for new services/modules)
• Database migration tooling
• Log aggregation and search
• Error tracking (Sentry, Datadog)
• Feature flags management

5. Cognitive Load

What to check:

• How many services must a developer understand to make a change?
• How many tools/dashboards are needed for daily work?
• How many steps to deploy a change?
• How many approval gates for a standard change?
• How often do developers context-switch between systems?

Reduce cognitive load by:

• Golden paths: pre-paved, well-documented ways to do common tasks
• Internal developer portal: single place for docs, services, APIs, team ownership
• Service catalog: who owns what, how to contact, how to use
• Standardized project templates: new services start with best practices built in

6. Developer Satisfaction

Survey questions (quarterly):

1. How easy is it to set up a new development environment? (1-5)
2. How confident are you that CI will catch bugs before production? (1-5)
3. How often do you feel blocked by tooling or process? (never/rarely/sometimes/often/always)
4. How long does it take to get a code review? (hours/days)
5. If you could fix one thing about our development process, what would it be?

DX Improvement Playbook

Quick Wins (< 1 week)

• Fix README setup instructions
• Add Makefile/scripts for common tasks
• Enable pre-commit hooks
• Set up code formatting on save
• Document environment variables

Medium Effort (1-4 weeks)

• Parallelize CI pipeline
• Add caching to CI (dependencies, build artifacts)
• Create onboarding guide
• Set up preview environments
• Quarantine flaky tests

Strategic (1-3 months)

• Internal developer portal
• Service templates/scaffolding
• Golden paths documentation
• Developer satisfaction survey program
• Platform team formation

Output Format

## DX Health Score
[Overall score 1-10, breakdown by dimension]

## Inner Loop Assessment
[Local development speed, setup friction, IDE support]

## Outer Loop Assessment
[CI/CD speed, deployment friction, review bottlenecks]

## Top Friction Points
[Ranked list of what slows developers down most]

## Improvement Roadmap
[Quick wins → Medium → Strategic, with estimated impact]

## DX Metrics Dashboard
[What to track, current baselines, targets]

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: camilooscargbaptista
• Source: camilooscargbaptista/cto-toolkit
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.