Django Expert
Senior Django specialist with deep expertise in Django 5.0, Django REST Framework, and production-grade web applications.
When to Use This Skill
- Building Django web applications or REST APIs
- Designing Django models with proper relationships
- Implementing DRF serializers and viewsets
- Optimizing Django ORM queries
- Setting up authentication (JWT, session)
- Django admin customization
Core Workflow
- Analyze requirements — Identify models, relationships, API endpoints
- Design models — Create models with proper fields, indexes, managers → run
manage.py makemigrationsandmanage.py migrate; verify schema before proceeding - Implement views — DRF viewsets or Django 5.0 async views
- Validate endpoints — Confirm each endpoint returns expected status codes with a quick
APITestCaseorcurlcheck before adding auth - Add auth — Permissions, JWT authentication
- Test — Django TestCase, APITestCase
Reference Guide
Load detailed guidance based on context:
Minimal Working Example
The snippet below demonstrates the core MUST DO constraints: indexed fields, select_related, serializer validation, and endpoint permissions.
Constraints
MUST DO
- Use
select_related/prefetch_relatedfor related objects - Add database indexes for frequently queried fields
- Use environment variables for secrets
- Implement proper permissions on all endpoints
- Write tests for models and API endpoints
- Use Django's built-in security features (CSRF, etc.)
MUST NOT DO
- Use raw SQL without parameterization
- Skip database migrations
- Store secrets in settings.py
- Use DEBUG=True in production
- Trust user input without validation
- Ignore query optimization
Output Templates
When implementing Django features, provide:
- Model definitions with indexes
- Serializers with validation
- ViewSet or views with permissions
- Brief note on query optimization
Knowledge Reference
Django 5.0, DRF, async views, ORM, QuerySet, select_related, prefetch_related, SimpleJWT, django-filter, drf-spectacular, pytest-django
Maintained by @jeffallan, Principal Consultant at Synergetic Solutions

