Netlify Development Best Practices

Overview

This skill provides comprehensive guidelines for building and deploying projects on Netlify, covering serverless functions, edge functions, background functions, scheduled functions, Netlify Blobs, Image CDN, and deployment configuration.

Core Principles

• Use in-code configuration via exported config objects (preferred over netlify.toml)
• Never add version numbers to imported Netlify packages (use @netlify/functions, never @netlify/functions@1.2.3)
• Only add CORS headers when explicitly required
• Leverage appropriate function types for different use cases
• Use Netlify Blobs for state and data storage
• The .netlify folder is generated tooling output, not user code — keep it in .gitignore
• Never put serverless or edge functions inside the publish/public directory
• Don't change the default functions or edge-functions directory unless explicitly asked to

Function Types Overview