Not theory. Not thought leadership. These are the actual decision frameworks, checklists, and engineering standards our teams follow across every engagement.
How we choose the right technology for every product, every time.
The wrong tech stack decision made in week one can cost you six months and six figures by month six. This is the exact framework our senior engineers use to evaluate, debate, and decide, before a single line of code is written.
The five questions we ask before recommending any stack
Frontend, backend, and infrastructure decision trees
When to use a proven stack vs when to experiment
The hidden costs most teams discover too late
Stop building the wrong thing perfectly. This playbook walks through how we run discovery, define scope, and set boundaries before engineering begins, so nothing surprises you mid-sprint.
Fourteen questions every founding team should answer before their first sprint. Covers user flows, technical dependencies, and the features that feel essential but aren't.
How we design APIs that are clean, scalable, and don't become a maintenance nightmare six months after launch. Covers REST vs GraphQL decisions, versioning, error handling, and documentation standards.
A "Login with Google" button is not a two-hour task. This playbook covers every authentication pattern we've implemented across 200+ products, when to use each, and the security decisions hiding inside each option.
A step-by-step framework for identifying, prioritising, and systematically addressing technical debt without stopping product delivery. Built for engineering leads inheriting codebases they didn't write.
How to build AI features that actually work in production, not just in demos. Covers prompt engineering, model selection, latency management, fallback handling, and the user experience decisions that make or break AI features.
How we use Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and Lovable as daily tools, not experiments. A practical guide to building an AI-first engineering culture that ships faster without sacrificing quality.
What happens before the first sprint determines what happens in every sprint after. This is our exact Sprint Zero checklist, from environment setup and CI/CD configuration to architecture documentation and team onboarding.
Going live is a milestone, not a gamble. Our pre-launch checklist covers performance, security, monitoring, rollback plans, and the 23 things teams forget to check until something breaks in production.
How to run a distributed engineering team that communicates clearly, moves fast, and doesn't need a meeting for every decision. Built from years of running teams across six offices and three continents.
How we hire senior engineers without trick questions or whiteboard puzzles. Covers our "build something real" challenge, what we actually look for, and the questions that reveal how someone thinks under pressure.
The numbers behind why a smaller senior team consistently outperforms a larger mixed-experience team. Includes a team composition calculator and the real cost of under-staffing seniority.
These aren't documents to read once and file away. They're working frameworks designed to be used in real situations, in discovery calls, sprint planning sessions, architecture reviews, and hiring conversations.
Written by a senior Devlyn engineer, not a content team
Based on real decisions made across 200+ shipped products
Updated when we learn something new, not on a publishing schedule
Free, because good engineering knowledge should be shared
Every team is different. If you need a custom engineering framework, a decision document for your specific architecture, or a playbook tailored to your product context, that's something we do as part of every engagement.
New playbooks drop when we build something worth sharing.