The advantages of stack-based internal developer platforms

As organizations double down on developer experience, one of the most meaningful, and technical, investments they can make is in an internal developer platform (IDP). Not the mythical one-size-fits-all “platform in a box,” but a fully composable, tailored set of tools, services, and workflows that reduces friction between development and operations.

For years, platform engineering teams have tried to strike the balance between empowering developers and maintaining governance. But that balancing act often collapses under the weight of tool sprawl, duplicated effort, and overly complex workflows.

That’s where a stack-based approach to IDPs can help.

Instead of prescribing a monolithic platform, this methodology emphasizes reusability, autonomy, and visibility, creating a standardized but flexible system where teams can define and deploy their own devops stack. It’s an approach we’ve seen succeed across our own user base at Cycloid, where IDPs are used not only to simplify devops practices but to align development and operations around shared, modular workflows.

What is a stack-based IDP?

A stack-based internal developer platform allows developers to self-serve infrastructure and services from a predefined, version-controlled catalog of templates, or “stacks.” These stacks encapsulate the entire life cycle of an application environment, from infrastructure-as-code tools and CI/CD to observability and cost controls.

Unlike traditional IDPs that are centrally managed and rigid, stack-based platforms are modular and composable by design. Platform engineers define the rules and templates; developers consume them with autonomy. This decouples platform governance from day-to-day delivery, increasing both productivity and compliance.

In practice, a stack might contain:

Terraform modules for infrastructure provisioning.

Argo CD template manifests or Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments.

CI/CD pipelines configured in GitLab or Jenkins.

Monitoring hooks for Prometheus or Datadog.

Security controls and budget guardrails baked into templates.

The goal isn’t just to enable self-service, but to encode best practices into reusable, extensible components that scale across teams and clouds.

Why stack-based IDP matters now

There’s a growing realization that developer experience isn’t just about better tooling, but about minimizing cognitive load and aligning workflows with the way developers build software.

In that context, IDPs serve as an abstraction layer that removes unnecessary complexity while preserving flexibility. But traditional IDPs often fail to live up to their promise for various reasons. Such as:

Developers resisting platforms they didn’t help shape.

Operations teams struggling to keep up with support requests.

Business leaders being left without visibility into cloud usage and costs.

A stack-based IDP can address these issues by promoting shared ownership, modular design, and traceable workflows. And in today’s multi-cloud and hybrid environments, that flexibility is critical.

Overcoming the technical challenges

While stack-based IDPs sound great in theory, implementing one can raise challenges.

First, standardization without stifling innovation is essential. Platform teams need to define stacks that are both opinionated and extensible. This can be achieved by wrapping infrastructure as code (IaC) into parameterized templates and enforcing strong version control practices. For instance, Cycloid enables the creation of reusable Terraform modules that developers can safely consume without deep IaC expertise.

Second, maintaining security and governance is a critical concern. Each stack must comply with security policies, cost budgets, and regulatory requirements, all without impeding developers. Embedding policy-as-code tools such as Open Policy Agent directly into CI/CD pipelines, and including cost estimation hooks, helps enforce compliance and cost awareness before deployment.

Third, developer onboarding and user experience must be prioritized. Even with the right stacks in place, developers need intuitive ways to navigate, deploy, and observe their applications. Building or integrating a visual interface—a “single pane of glass”— that maps technical workflows to real-world actions makes the platform approachable and effective.

Finally, tool chain fragmentation can limit stack usability. Stacks must integrate with existing tools and systems like GitHub, Jenkins, Kubernetes, AWS, and Azure, often within polyglot environments. Using cloud-native interfaces and declarative APIs helps abstract these integrations, while well-documented interfaces ease developer adoption.

The future of modular platforms

The future of platform engineering lies in intelligent abstraction, which means not hiding complexity, but structuring it in ways that are reusable, secure, and discoverable. A stack-based IDP empowers teams by offering:

Self-service infrastructure with baked-in guardrails.

Faster delivery with pre-approved, production-ready templates.

Observability and cost control via shared governance models.

At Cycloid, we’ve invested heavily in this vision over the years, helping teams to build an IDP that allows them to define and orchestrate their own stacks, visualize devops pipelines, and govern cloud usage in real time. By focusing on reuse and autonomy, organizations reduce friction, scale devops practices, and deliver value faster.

Just as GitHub changed the way we collaborate on code, a stack-based approach to IDPs changes the way we collaborate on platforms. The companies that embrace this shift and build their platforms modularly will be the ones best positioned to win in a fast-moving, cloud-native world.

Oliver de Turckheim is solutions architect at Cycloid.

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