I'm building a golden-path setup for new services, what should the template include?

A good golden-path service template should make the “happy path” easy: create a service, run it locally, test it, ship it, observe it, and operate it safely with minimal custom setup.

Here’s a practical checklist of what to include.

1. Service scaffold

• Standard repo structure
• Language/framework runtime pinned
• Clear entrypoints
• Example config files
• Basic README with “run locally” steps
• Ownership metadata:
  • team name
  • service name
  • repo link
  • on-call/contact info

2. Build and run

• One-command local start
• One-command build
• Container/Dockerfile support
• Dependency lockfile
• Standard Makefile or task runner targets, e.g.:
  • make run
  • make test
  • make lint
  • make build

3. Testing

• Unit test skeleton
• Integration test scaffold
• Smoke test example
• Test data fixtures/mocks
• Coverage reporting
• Test conventions documented

4. CI/CD pipeline

• CI config prewired
• Lint/test/build on every PR
• Security scans
• Artifact creation/versioning
• CD deploy pipeline template
• Environment promotion flow:
  • dev
  • staging
  • prod
• Rollback mechanism

5. Deployment and runtime

• Kubernetes manifests / Helm / Kustomize / Terraform modules as needed
• Environment variable conventions
• Secret management integration
• Health checks:
  • liveness
  • readiness
• Graceful shutdown support
• Resource requests/limits
• Autoscaling defaults

6. Observability

• Structured logging setup
• Standard metrics endpoint
• Tracing hooks
• Default dashboards
• Alert rules template
• Correlation/request IDs
• Error reporting integration

7. Security and compliance

• Secure defaults
• Dependency scanning
• Secret scanning
• Least-privilege IAM/service account defaults
• SBOM generation if applicable
• API authN/authZ patterns
• Input validation examples
• PII logging guidance
• Policy-as-code checks

8. Operational readiness

• Runbook template
• Incident response links
• SLO/SLI starter template
• Common failure modes documented
• Feature flag integration
• Safe config change process
• Backward compatibility guidance
• Data migration pattern if relevant

9. Service API standards

• API contract template
• OpenAPI/Proto/GraphQL schema starter if relevant
• Versioning strategy
• Error response conventions
• Pagination/filtering conventions
• Idempotency guidance
• Deprecation policy

10. Developer experience

• Clear folder conventions
• Code generation for repetitive patterns
• Example endpoint/job/consumer
• Starter docs for common tasks
• Pre-commit hooks
• Editor/formatter config
• Suggested local dev environment setup

11. Platform integration

• Templates for:
  • service catalog entry
  • DNS/ingress
  • secrets
  • service mesh if used
  • message queue/topic subscriptions
  • databases/cache provisioning
• Standard labels/annotations for ownership and observability
• Registration in internal tooling

12. Documentation

• README
• Architecture overview
• Decision log/ADR template
• Onboarding guide
• Deployment guide
• Troubleshooting guide
• Support and escalation info

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A strong golden path usually includes opinionated defaults

For example:

• one supported runtime
• one deployment method
• one logging format
• one metrics/tracing stack
• one CI pattern
• one service naming convention

That reduces choices and keeps teams moving fast.

What to avoid in the template

• Too many optional branches
• Framework-agnostic ambiguity
• Empty “example” files that don’t work
• Hidden manual steps
• Platform-specific jargon without explanation
• Overengineering before the common use case is proven

A useful minimal starter template

If you want the smallest viable golden-path template, include:

1. working service skeleton
2. local run/build/test commands
3. CI pipeline
4. deployment manifest
5. logging/metrics/tracing defaults
6. health checks
7. README + runbook
8. security scanning
9. ownership metadata

If you want, I can turn this into:

• a repo template checklist,
• a golden-path maturity model, or
• a sample directory structure for your stack.