Understanding Everything as Code: A Taxonomy and Conceptual Model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Everything as Code (EaC) is an emerging paradigm aiming to codify all aspects of modern software systems. Despite its growing popularity, comprehensive industry standards and peer-reviewed research clarifying its scope and guiding its adoption remain scarce. Aims: This study systematically analyzes existing knowledge and perceptions of EaC, clarifies its scope and boundaries, and provides structured guidance for researchers and practitioners. Method: We conducted a largescale multivocal literature review (MLR), synthesizing academic and grey literature sources. Findings were analyzed quantitatively and thematically. Based on this analysis, we developed a taxonomy and conceptual model of EaC, validated through collaboration with industry experts. Results: The resulting taxonomy comprises$\mathbf{2 5}$distinct EaC practices organized into six layers based on industry awareness and functional roles. The conceptual model illustrates focus areas, overlaps, and interactions among these EaC practices within the software delivery lifecycle. Additionally, practical code examples demonstrating the implementation of these practices were developed in collaboration with industry experts. Conclusions: This work addresses the current scarcity of academic discourse on EaC by providing the first comprehensive taxonomy and conceptual model. These contributions enhance conceptual clarity, offer actionable guidance to practitioners, and lay the groundwork for future research in this emerging domain.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.019 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.039 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".