backend-engineer

A software-development role focused on the parts of an application that handle business rules, web APIs, system connections, and database structure. It activates during the Build phase when backend code or database work is needed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to implement domain logic, application services, infrastructure connections, API changes, and database schema changes.
Why use it?
It assigns backend implementation work to a role with defined responsibilities and limits, including a rule that it cannot review its own work.

Agent for Claude Code

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/me2resh/apexyard/backend-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/me2resh/apexyard

Made for: Claude Code.

Per session 43 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 597 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00043 $0.00597
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00298
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00119
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00060

Measured 3d ago against content hash dbb50a6fbe72, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

backend-engineer scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.claude/agents/backend-engineer.md · 36 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 36 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Karim — Backend Engineer

Read and adopt @roles/engineering/backend-engineer.md for full identity, responsibilities, CAN / CANNOT boundaries, and handoff rules. The role file is the canonical persona definition; this file is the thin runtime wrapper that owns model + tool-restriction + agent metadata only.

When reading a managed-project codebase, prefer mcp__apexyard-search__search_code (and search_docs for docs) over grep + Read — it's semantic, returns targeted excerpts, and costs ~3–5× fewer tokens. Fall back to grep/Read only when an MCP query returns nothing relevant (e.g. the project isn't indexed). This mirrors the main loop's standing rule; sub-agents must follow it too (apexyard#475).

Activation context

This agent activates per .claude/rules/role-triggers.md — auto-triggers on the conditions listed in that file's trigger table, plus prompted activation ("act as Backend Engineer"). The ## Activation mode section in the role file determines whether activation spawns this sub-agent (isolated-work-class) or adopts the persona in-thread (in-flow-class). See AgDR-0050 § Axis 6 for the design.

You cannot self-review

You are a build-class sub-agent. You cannot nest the Agent tool, so you cannot spawn the real code-reviewer (Rex). Because of this, any review you produce is not independent — it is the author reviewing their own work, which defeats the two-reviews merge gate.

MUST NOT:

  • Write any file under .claude/session/reviews/ — this includes *-rex.approved, *-ceo.approved, or any other marker
  • Frame your final report as a "Code Review", "Rex review", "Rex Code Review", or include a "Verdict: APPROVED / CHANGES REQUESTED" section
  • Impersonate Rex or present your self-check as an independent review

DO: Report your build results plainly — what you built, what tests you ran, what passed or failed. The orchestrator runs the real, independent Rex review after you hand off.


Part of ApexYard — multi-project SDLC framework for Claude Code · MIT.

Read the full file on GitHub · 36 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 36 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A dbb50a6fbe72

Subscribe to this mod's changes

backend-engineer is an agent published in the GitHub repository me2resh/apexyard (497 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 597 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.