When TeraSky’s Lead Architect, CTO Office Scott Rosenberg, releases something new, the developer community takes notice. And this time, he’s outdone himself by contributing seven powerful plugins to enhance your Backstage experience! Let’s dive into what’s available right now in the Backstage marketplace and peek at what’s coming soon.
Available Now in the Backstage Marketplace
DevPod Plugin: Your IDE, Your Way
Ever wish you could jump straight from Backstage into a fully configured development environment? That’s exactly what the DevPod plugin delivers. Built on top of Loft.sh‘s open-source project, it lets you launch your component’s codebase in your preferred IDE with just a click. No more complex setup procedures or environment inconsistencies—just pure, streamlined development.
ScaleOps Plugin: Kubernetes Costs at Your Fingertips
Keeping track of Kubernetes costs usually means juggling multiple tools and dashboards. Not anymore! The ScaleOps plugin brings your workload metrics and cost data right into Backstage. The plugin’s intuitive interface provides transparency and accountability, helping teams make informed decisions about resource allocation and cost optimization.
Kubernetes Ingestor Plugin: Automatic Catalog Magic
This might be the MVP of the bunch. The Kubernetes Ingestor plugin automatically pulls your Kubernetes workloads into the Backstage catalog – and yes, it’s as amazing as it sounds. Just annotate your Kubernetes resources with the data you want, and it handles the rest. It works with any CRD-based workload and has special integration with Crossplane, automatically creating GitOps-oriented Software Templates for all your XRDs. It’s like having a really efficient librarian for your Kubernetes resources.
Crossplane Visualizer Plugin: Making Complexity Beautiful
Crossplane is powerful, but let’s face it—visualizing resource hierarchies can get messy. The Crossplane Visualizer plugin turns that complexity into clarity with intuitive table and graph views right in Backstage. The combination of visual resource mapping, YAML manifest access, and Kubernetes event monitoring provides the visibility teams need to manage their Crossplane resources effectively.
Kyverno Policy Reports Plugin: Policy Compliance Made Simple
This plugin is a game-changer for teams using Kyverno (and that’s a lot of us these days). It brings all your policy reports right into Backstage, giving you a clear view of violations and necessary fixes. No more hunting through different tools to check compliance – everything your team needs to know is right there in your developer portal.
Coming Soon…
While not yet in the marketplace, the following plugins are public in the relevant GitHub repo and are worth getting excited about!
Crossplane Claim Updater: Day-2 Operations Simplified
The Crossplane Claim Updater extends Backstage’s scaffolding capabilities into day-2 operations. It lets you update Crossplane claims through a user-friendly interface that automatically creates GitOps-ready PRs. By streamlining the update process and maintaining GitOps best practices, one of the most common challenges in ongoing resource management is addressed.
Entity Scaffolder: Context-Aware Templates
Last but definitely not least, the Entity Scaffolder plugin brings context awareness to your Backstage templates. It embeds Scaffolder templates directly into your components and pre-populates fields based on context. This straightforward but powerful approach significantly improves users’ template experience while reducing errors and saving time.
Why This Matters
At TeraSky, we’ve seen firsthand the challenges developers face. These plugins are solutions born from real-world experience and a combination of deep technical expertise with practical problem-solving. Most importantly, they reflect our team members’ deep, personal commitment to solving stubborn problems.
Ready to take your Backstage implementation to the next level? Head over to the Backstage marketplace to grab the first five plugins, and stay tuned for the others coming soon. We can’t wait to see how you use them to transform your developer experience!