Django

Django Web Framework AI Skill Guide

Overview & Engine Architecture

Django is a batteries-included Python web framework with an ORM, migrations, URL routing, forms/admin, and a middleware stack. Requests flow through middleware to URL resolvers and views; the ORM maps models to SQL. Agents write migrations carefully, prevent N+1 queries, keep DEBUG=False in production, and never commit SECRET_KEY.

HTTP -> WSGI/ASGI -> middleware -> URLconf -> view
                                      |
                                   ORM / templates / DRF

When to use this skill

• Building server-rendered or API-backed Django apps
• Designing models and migrations
• Fixing ORM performance (N+1, missing indexes)
• Hardening settings for deployment

Operational directives

1. Make migrations for every model change; review generated SQL for locks.
2. Use select_related / prefetch_related to avoid N+1.
3. Validate with forms/serializers; never trust raw request.POST for critical fields.
4. Store secrets in environment; rotate SECRET_KEY if exposed.
5. Prefer explicit related_name on relationships used in reverse.

Model + migration sketch

from django.db import models

class Order(models.Model):
    customer = models.ForeignKey("customers.Customer", related_name="orders")
    status = models.CharField(max_length=32, db_index=True)
    total_cents = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    class Meta:
        indexes = [
            models.Index(fields=["customer", "-created_at"]),
        ]

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver
python manage.py test

Query hygiene

# Bad: N+1
for o in Order.objects.all():
    print(o.customer.email)

# Good:
for o in Order.objects.select_related("customer"):
    print(o.customer.email)

Production settings checklist

Best practices

• Thin views; put domain logic in services/model methods thoughtfully.
• Use TransactionTestCase only when required - prefer TestCase.
• Constrain admin to staff users; audit dangerous actions.
• Collect static files in deployment pipelines.

Limitations

• Async views/ORM support is partial depending on version and DB driver.
• Django REST Framework is a related but separate skill surface.
• Multi-tenant schemes need explicit design (schemas vs row filters).

Related skills

• @postgresql - SQL and indexing behind the ORM
• @fastapi - alternative Python API stack
• @docker - containerizing gunicorn/uvicorn deployments