The Platform Compass
Curate lodestones to anchor and orient developers within your internal developer platforms
Wiser people than me say that when you travel somewhere new it’s a good idea to carry a compass. Far be it from me to argue, so over the years I’ve developed my own. It does not point north; it points toward the nearest bookshop (or library).
These shops are my lodestones. As I navigate and explore a city, they are the magnetic points by which I reorient myself against an overwhelming new environment and an unfamiliar set of structures.
Yesterday in New York it was Strand and Alabaster. Today in London it has been Foyles, Goldsboro, and Skoob. In each case, the bookshops pull me into the city’s orbit, not as a stranger but as a reader. They are the fixed stars by which I can steer.
A bookshop is both code and poem. It is the city’s program, written in a dialect of shelves and bindings, and it is the city’s poem, full of ambiguity, accident, and forgotten resonances. To enter one is to glimpse the architecture of thought: its idioms, its preferences, its metaphors, its machinery. It doesn’t matter how much we try and standardise taxonomy or system, each bookshop carries its own character and signature.
These lodestones are not interchangeable. Each bookshop has both general value and specific value:
General: any bookshop offers reorientation, a narrative anchor, a sense of habitability.
Specific: each bookshop reveals what this city chooses to remember—its rare editions, its local voices, its eccentric classifications.
So I ask myself: do we design similar lodestones into our internal developer platforms?
In an unfamiliar codebase or platform, developers also need lodestones—magnetic points to return to when lost. They might be:
Clear documentation hubs (a Foyles of knowledge).
Stable, trusted APIs (a Strand of reliability).
Curated starter templates or examples (a Goldsboro of prized, rare clarity).
Sandboxes or test environments (a Skoob of rediscovery and play).
Communities of practice (an Alabaster where voices gather in cramped intimacy).
Each one has general value—they orient the wandering developer. And each has specific value, revealing what this particular platform, in this particular organisation, chooses to elevate and make habitual.
And that’s the lesson: Bookshops teach me that to truly inhabit a place, I need lodestones that combine clarity with ambiguity, generality with specificity. Cities provide bookshops. Platforms must provide their own.
Maxim: Curate Lodestones into Your Platform
Cities have bookshops as lodestones to help me orient myself. Platforms need them too. Without them, we are lost in a labyrinth of streets and services, unable to reorient. With them, we can always find our way back to our path.
Practices
Name your lodestones: Identify the few, critical places developers can always return to.
Make them visible: Surface lodestones early in the developer journey, like bookshops on the main street.
Curate them carefully: They must be consistent, stable, and trustworthy. A broken lodestone is worse than none.
Balance general with specific: Provide anchors (docs, APIs, templates) that orient everyone, and unique points (domain-specific examples, curated libraries) that make the platform distinctive.
Evolve them slowly: A lodestone that shifts too often breaks trust.
Things to avoid
Mistaking everything for a lodestone. If all is a landmark, none is.
Constantly moving or renaming key resources.
Leaving lodestones uncared for, so they rot into traps.
Creating lodestones for the builders, not the users.
Checklist
Does the platform have 3–5 clear lodestones that you’ve invested in every developer knowing?
Are they easy to find, stable, ready to be habitually used?
Do they reduce cognitive load in moments of overwhelm?
Do they reflect both the general (shared practice) and the specific (domain expertise)?
Some Examples
Documentation Hub → like Foyles, sprawling but authoritative.
Trusted APIs / SDKs → like The Strand, foundational and enduring.
Curated Templates → like Goldsboro, prized and rare, built with love.
Playgrounds / Sandboxes → like Skoob, second-hand but invaluable for learning.
Community Space → like Alabaster, intimate, where voices gather.
Just as bookshops anchor me in new cities, lodestones anchor developers in complex platforms. Design internal developer platform lodestones that are visible, stable, and habit-forming: general anchors for all, specific signals of your platform’s character.