Current Backbone island shape
The existing template already points toward islands, even if it does not call them that yet.
A page is not one blob. The hello-world feature is split across:
hello-page.tsx: the mostly-presentational page component;hello-page-route.tsx: the route adapter that binds real state/actions;hello-page-state.ts: Zustand state and ConnectRPC client calls;hello-page.stories.tsx: preview states;hello-page.test.tsx: component-level tests;e2e/features/helloworld.featureande2e/tests/helloworld.spec.ts: behavior-level coverage;- server database/RPC modules and SQL migrations.
That is close to a compilation unit. A Backspine “island” is probably not just a React component. It is the vertical slice: page, route adapter, state, payloads, backend endpoint, migrations, stories, and e2e behavior.
The practical version of “recreate, don’t patch” is therefore not regenerate the whole app. It is regenerate a bounded island and verify its contracts.
[USER: write — the idea that generated code should be scoped into isolated, reviewable islands within structural elements, rather than delivered as a continuous diff or stream of tokens.]
Referenced from: backspine hot take — don’t read agent text