twelve-factor app

Definitions

1. A methodology for building software-as-a-service applications, defining twelve principles including storing config in environment variables, treating backing services as attached resources, and ensuring dev/prod parity. Originally codified by Heroku engineers, the twelve-factor methodology anticipated container-based deployment patterns and remains influential in cloud-native development.

   In plain English: Twelve rules for building modern web applications that are easy to deploy, scale, and maintain — written by Heroku engineers and still widely followed today.

   Example: Our app violates at least eight of the twelve factors — it reads config from a local file, stores state on the filesystem, and has completely different dev and prod environments.

Related Terms

• Environment Variable
• Twelve-Factor App
• Config as Code
• MVVM
• Platform Abstraction