Current Backbone v1 grounding

This is not only a thought experiment anymore. The working codebase is public as wimpheling/backbone-template-v1. The public concept is Backspine, but the repo and packages still use the first working name: Backbone.

The current template already encodes several of the ideas in this draft:

  • client pages are split into page components, route adapters, state, stories, and tests under template/client/src/pages/;
  • the React design system is separated into @backbone/design-system-contract, @backbone/design-system-basic, and the public facade @backbone/design-system;
  • app code is pushed toward the design-system vocabulary instead of raw JSX;
  • a custom design-system-lint package forbids raw DOM JSX in app code and blocks direct imports from external UI libraries;
  • end-to-end behavior is specified with Gherkin features and Playwright tests under template/e2e/;
  • the backend is Rust, with SQL migrations, database modules, and ConnectRPC wiring.

So when this post says “Backspine,” read it as the methodology emerging from that Backbone template, not as a blank framework fantasy.

[USER: write — this is the project pitch. What is backspine? What problem does it solve? What makes AI-assisted web development different from traditional web development, and why does it need its own framework? What’s the elevator pitch?]