Developers — Building and Maintaining the Platform

You're in the right place if you're a platform engineer working on the tutorials-ims codebase: the CAP backend, AppRouter, Hugo site, build pipeline, deployment, or anything else under srv/, app/, hugo/, approuter/, or scripts/.

Start here

• Getting Started — local dev setup, folder map, scripts reference, environment variables. Read this first if you're new.

Architecture

How the platform fits together. Read these when you need to understand a subsystem before changing it.

• Authentication — IdP → JWT → user resolution
• Runtime Architecture — request flow, AppRouter, CAP
• CDN / Edge Caching — cacheable allow-list, publish-time purge
• Build Architecture — fetch → parse → Hugo → publish
• Joule Architecture — chat, tools, RAG, embeddings
• Joule Aurora Background — aurora mesh background animation (#392)
• CAP Backend — services, entities, jobs, bootstrap
• Frontend Apps — admin shell, scanner, display

Operations

Runbooks and operational references. Read these when you need to deploy, test, or configure.

• MTA Deployment — full deploy procedure
• Deployment Topology — what runs where
• BTP Destinations (SCI / NGDS) — destination names + PassVault links
• Testing Guide — unit, hybrid, smoke
• Testing Endpoints — UI + API endpoint reference
• Live Probing — verify fixes against the real binding before deploying
• Production Readiness — services and entitlements
• QA Channel Bootstrap — author preview channel
• Joule Chat Admin Settings — RAG and grounding
• GitHub App Setup — sap-tutorials-builder App
• IAS Setup — Option A/B authentication on a subaccount

Reference

Topics that aren't on a critical path but matter when you go looking.

• CAP / CDS Gotchas — discovered failure modes in CAP services, CDS models, drafts, audit-logging, OData
• HANA / HDI / SQL Gotchas — discovered failure modes in HANA SQL, HDI deploy artifacts, SPARQL, hdbgrants
• Vue Islands / Hugo / Vite Gotchas — discovered failure modes in the frontend pipeline
• Theme Variants — building event themes on Fiori Horizon
• AI Skills Catalog — index of every internal AI capability: what each does, its external data, and how to maintain it
• AI Consumption — making developers.sap.com AI-friendly
• Cookie & Storage Analysis — auditor's reference
• Sage Extension Migration — VS Code extension coupling
• External Integrations — what we integrate with
• Key Design Decisions — why the platform looks the way it does
• Architecture Decision Records — canonical, single-topic records with status and consequences