Common Lifecycle Stages

Whilst the spec.type of a Component or API may be any string, understanding is made easier by sticking to a small set of well-known and common values. Thus we recommend that when specifying an entity one of the following is used in this field:

• experimental - an experiment or early, non-production entity, signaling that users may not prefer to consume it over other more established entities, or that there are low or no reliability guarantees
• production - an established, owned, maintained entity
• deprecated - an entity that is at the end of its lifecycle, and may disappear at a later point in time

These are selected such that they overlap with the common lifecycle stages described in the backstage documentation, but should be added to and ammended to reflect usage.