# 18F/development-guide

A set of guidelines and best practices for an awesome software engineering team

Repository: https://github.com/18F/development-guide
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/development-guide
Homepage: https://engineering.18f.gov
Language: HTML
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Archived: true
Last push: 2024-03-19T03:19:55+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4009, "days_push": 897, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1469, forks 166 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:48.965452+00:00)

## What it is
A published guide of software engineering best practices and guidelines maintained by the 18F/TTS Engineering Practices Guild, written in Markdown and built as a static site with Jekyll. It serves as a living knowledge base covering team practices, tools, and common patterns for software development teams.

## Use cases
- find best practices for running a software engineering team
- learn how a professional engineering guild documents its standards
- reference guidelines for code review and development workflows
- set up engineering conventions for a new team
- study an example of a Jekyll-published internal engineering guide
- onboard new developers with shared team practices

## When to choose
- you want actionable, opinionated engineering guidance from an experienced government digital services team
- you need a template or inspiration for your own team's engineering handbook
- you are looking for a curated knowledge base of software development practices

## When to avoid
- you need executable tooling or a library rather than written guidance
- you need up-to-date content, since this guide has moved to the consolidated 18F guides repository
- your context differs significantly from US government software delivery

## Facets
- artifact type: learning-resource
- maturity: maintenance
- function: documentation, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, documentation, tutorials
- platform: cross-platform
- tags: engineering-practices, best-practices, jekyll, government, team-guidelines, software-craftsmanship, web-server

## Member repositories
- 18F/development-guide (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:48.965452+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:34:51.703641+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/18F/development-guide (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:48.965452+00:00, sha 6b5eb361bf15)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.