Modern Web Architectures: Composability with Harmony | by Mike Chen | Mar, 2025
There are many conventional problems solved by composable software.
Build in AI speed — Compose enterprise-grade applications, features, and components
Beyond Strict Repository Structures
For years, teams have debated monorepos vs. polyrepos — both offering trade-offs in scalability, maintainability, and developer experience. Monorepos ensure consistency and straightforwardness for code reuse but become complex to scale, while polyrepos provide autonomy but introduce dependency management challenges.
Composability eliminates this debate by making the repository structure less coupled with how software is built. With frameworks like Harmony, developers can work with modular components that are independent of repository structure, enabling a truly decentralized development workflow.
Reusing Digital Assets Across Projects
In large enterprises, duplication is costly — not just in terms of code, but in wasted developer time and effort. Composability enables the reuse of business-critical functionalities across projects, ensuring efficiency and consistency.
Consider a design system — instead of reinventing UI components for every project, teams can maintain a single, shared repository of buttons, forms, and layouts that are easily consumed across multiple applications.
The same applies to backend services. A well-defined authentication module can power multiple products without teams having to rewrite login, authorization, and user management logic from scratch.
Composability ensures that foundational business capabilities — like authentication, payments, and content management — can be built once and reused everywhere.
The Bit Platform
Traditionally, software is owned and maintained by a designated team, creating bottlenecks when other teams need updates or fixes. This centralized ownership model does not scale but has become the norm since cross-ownership makes it difficult to manage.
Composability embraces Inner Source — a practice that applies open-source development principles to proprietary software. Instead of relying on one team to maintain a piece of software, multiple teams can contribute, iterate, and improve shared components.
This collaborative approach fosters:
- Faster innovation, as teams build on each other’s work.
- Reduced duplication, since components are extended rather than rewritten.
- More robust and secure code, thanks to broader peer review.
Inner Source transforms proprietary software development into a more open, collaborative ecosystem — allowing teams to build better software together.
This approach becomes practical using components as the fundamental unit.
