Node.js backend services

Stand up a plain Node.js HTTP/JSON service — node:http or Express 5 — that a person can read, test, and operate without a DI framework. This skill is about the runtime and the request lifecycle: how to lay out the code, how to keep async correct, how errors become status codes, how config fails fast, and how the process dies cleanly. The contract shape, the type system, and the data layer live elsewhere (see the boundary below).

Boundary

• The app is built around @Module / @Injectable / DI providers, guards, interceptors, pipes, exception filters → nestjs. Nest starts the moment the DI container appears; route away then, do not half-build it here.
• Pure TypeScript type system, generics, tsconfig → typescript. This skill uses TS but does not teach types.
• REST resource modeling, versioning, pagination, status-code semantics (framework-agnostic) → api-design. This skill wires the handlers; api-design decides the contract. Cross-cutting error taxonomy → error-handling.
• Schema, queries, connection pool, migrations → postgresdb / prisma-orm / drizzle-orm. Calling a repository stays here; designing the table does not.
• Containerizing / shipping → docker / deployment. Choosing the logging/metrics/tracing stack → observability. This skill emits structured logs and a shutdown hook; it does not own the pipeline.

Decide first

Pick the runtime shape before writing code — the wrong choice is expensive to undo.