The Platform Abstractions: What Developers Declare, What Platform Engineers Govern in OpenChoreo
Every internal developer platform makes a promise: developers get self-service simplicity, while platform engineers keep governance and control. Most platforms break that promise the first time the two sides need different things from the same resource. In this session, we follow a single service through OpenChoreo from both sides of the golden path. Developers declare what they want to run using components, workloads, and dependencies; platform engineers define what's allowed through component types, traits, and workflows - golden paths expressed as configuration, not custom code. We'll see exactly where the two sides meet at release time, how promotion across environments stays governed without slowing developers down, and how the same abstractions surface as a portal experience, per-environment overrides, and cost insights. You'll leave with a practical mental model for designing platform abstractions that serve both personas without compromise.
Speakers
Kavith Lokuhewage is an Associate Director and Architect at WSO2, with nearly 13 years of experience building developer tools and portals for WSO2 products. He started his career contributing to Eclipse-based tooling and later played a key role in the transition to VS Code-based tooling. He was a lead developer in building developer tooling for the Ballerina language, including the Low Code editor, Data Mapper, IDE extensions, and Language Server. He later led the Choreo SaaS Portal team, focusing on improving the experience of developers and platform engineers. He is currently a maintainer of OpenChoreo, leading the development of its Backstage-based Portal with a focus on simplifying platform and developer experiences.