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The Flagsmith Backstage Plugin brings feature flag observability directly into your Backstage developer portal. It provides three components:

  • Feature Flags Tab — A full-page table listing all flags, their tags, and environment states.
  • Overview Card — A quick summary of your feature flags for entity overview pages.
  • Usage Card — A chart showing flag usage metrics over time.

A canvas displaying all components of the Flagsmith Backstage plugin

Integrate with Backstage

1. Install the plugin

Install the plugin from your Backstage app root:

yarn --cwd packages/app add @flagsmith/backstage-plugin

2. Configure the proxy

Add the Flagsmith proxy configuration to your app-config.yaml:

proxy:
endpoints:
'/flagsmith':
target: 'https://api.flagsmith.com/api/v1'
headers:
Authorization: Api-Key FLAGSMITH_API_TOKEN
  • FLAGSMITH_API_TOKEN: obtain from Organisation Settings > API Keys in Flagsmith.
  • If you are self-hosting Flagsmith, replace the target URL with your own Flagsmith API address, e.g. https://flagsmith.example.com/api/v1.
note

Enterprise users: when generating the Organisation API key, select permissions View Project and View Environment, so that Backstage can see your Environments and Features in Flagsmith.

3. Set up entity annotation

Annotate your entities in catalog-info.yaml so the plugin knows which Flagsmith project to display:

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
name: my-service
annotations:
flagsmith.com/project-id: 'PROJECT_ID'
spec:
type: service
owner: my-team
lifecycle: production
  • PROJECT_ID: obtain from the Flagsmith dashboard URL, e.g. /project/<id>/....

Add Components to Backstage

Edit your packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx to add the Flagsmith components.

Feature Flags Tab

Import and add the FlagsTab as a new tab on your entity page:

import { FlagsTab } from '@flagsmith/backstage-plugin';

// Inside your entity page layout, add a new tab:
<EntityLayout.Route path="/feature-flags" title="Feature Flags">
<FlagsTab />
</EntityLayout.Route>;

A list of feature flags from Flagsmith along with their tags, and states per environment, displayed in Backstage

Click a feature in the list to reveal its usage graphs and detailed information:

The expanded Flagsmith feature, showing the details and usage metrics

Overview Card

Add the FlagsmithOverviewCard to your entity overview page:

import { FlagsmithOverviewCard } from '@flagsmith/backstage-plugin';

// Inside your overview grid:
<Grid item md={6}>
<FlagsmithOverviewCard />
</Grid>;

A compact list of features displaying their states per environment

Usage Card

Add the FlagsmithUsageCard to display flag usage metrics:

import { FlagsmithUsageCard } from '@flagsmith/backstage-plugin';

// Inside your overview grid:
<Grid item md={6}>
<FlagsmithUsageCard />
</Grid>;

A bar chart displaying the usage metrics for the past 30 days