backend-dev-guidelines

Implement a layered architecture with Routes → Controllers → Services → Repositories, where each layer handles one responsibility. Controllers parse requests and delegate to services, services contain business logic, and repositories manage database access through Prisma, ensuring clean separation and testability.

Use a BaseController pattern combined with Sentry integration to catch and track all errors. Define custom error types, implement centralized error handling middleware, and log exceptions to Sentry so issues are monitored across your microservices in real time.

Use Zod for schema-based input validation in your controller layer before passing data to services. Zod provides type-safe validation with strong TypeScript integration, catching runtime errors at the request boundary and reducing bugs downstream.

Yes. The layered architecture with Controllers, Services, and Repositories scales across microservices. Apply consistent patterns for routes, middleware, config via unifiedConfig, and Sentry error handling across services like blog-api, auth-service, and notifications-service.

Refactor incrementally by extracting business logic into services, adding repository layers for data access, introducing Zod validation, and integrating Sentry for error tracking. Use the provided guidelines to modernize routes, middleware, and dependency injection step by step.

Use unifiedConfig to manage environment variables and configuration centrally across your microservices. This ensures consistency, type safety, and simplifies multi-service deployments without duplicating config logic in each service.