backend-dev-guidelines

Layered architecture separates concerns into routes, controllers, services, and repositories. This pattern enhances maintainability by isolating business logic from HTTP handling and database access, making your Node.js APIs testable and scalable across microservices.

Use Zod for input validation and `unifiedConfig` for type-safe configuration management. This eliminates unsafe `process.env` access and ensures runtime type safety across your Express application without manual validation boilerplate.

Apply `asyncErrorWrapper` to wrap async route handlers and catch errors consistently. Combined with Sentry error tracking, this ensures all async errors are captured and logged, preventing silent failures in production microservices.

Yes. Prisma integrates as your repository layer, providing type-safe database queries within the layered architecture pattern. This Skill guides you to implement Prisma repositories that work seamlessly with controllers and services.

Middleware handles cross-cutting concerns like authentication and logging; controllers handle request-specific logic. This Skill teaches you to use Sentry and `asyncErrorWrapper` at the controller level to catch business logic errors while middleware manages application-level concerns.

No. This Skill teaches single-service layered architecture patterns first, then scales to microservices. The patterns—controllers, services, repositories, and centralized error handling—work for monoliths and distributed systems alike.