what is frontend fr?

This is the backend codebase that powers the frontend of The Guardian's website, theguardian.com. Despite the name, its job is not to render pages directly for readers. Instead, it collects content and builds data that gets passed to a separate rendering system called Dotcom Rendering, which produces the actual pages visitors see. The application is built with Play Framework, a web framework for Scala. The build process has two parts: client-side assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) are compiled using Make, while the server-side application is built with SBT, the standard build tool for Scala projects. The codebase operates under a set of strict performance rules. Every request must be cacheable with a proper cache header. Each request is allowed only one call to an external service, such as The Guardian's content API. Responses are expected to come back in under 500 milliseconds on average, and any request taking more than two seconds is cut off automatically. Documentation lives inside a dedicated docs folder in the repository. New developers are directed there for installation steps, a troubleshooting guide, development tips, and instructions on how to deploy changes. The README is intentionally brief and points readers to those docs rather than repeating their contents inline. This is a production codebase from a major news organization, and the emphasis throughout is on speed and reliability at scale.