Issue 008 of the htek.dev newsletter. Last issue, we covered the 7-layer AI governance stack — how to control autonomous agents in production. This time, we’re going tactical: how to build an internal developer platform on GitHub that actually works — without Backstage, without Kubernetes operators, and without a 6-month implementation timeline.
The Platform Engineering Movement Is Real — But the Tooling Is Wrong
Platform engineering isn’t a trend. It’s a structural response to a real problem: developer teams spend 30% of their time on operational tasks instead of building product features. The CNCF Platform Engineering Maturity Model formalized this in 2024, and Team Topologies gave us the vocabulary — platform teams exist to reduce cognitive load for stream-aligned teams.