Feature Flag Management Template

There is no universal number, but teams with more than 50 active flags typically report management overhead and increased bug surface area. Focus on the ratio of active flags to engineers. If your team has more flags than engineers, prioritize cleanup. The key metric is flag age distribution. If most flags are under 30 days old, your hygiene is good regardless of total count.

No. Use flags for high-risk changes, gradual rollouts, and experiments. Low-risk changes like copy updates, small bug fixes, or internal tooling improvements can ship without flags. Over-flagging creates noise and makes the flag registry less useful. A good rule of thumb: if the change could break revenue, user experience, or system stability, use a flag. Otherwise, ship directly.

A [feature flag](/glossary/feature-flag) is a temporary toggle used during development and rollout that should be removed after full deployment. A feature gate is a permanent access control tied to a plan, tier, or permission. Gates belong in your entitlement system, not your flag system. Conflating the two leads to permanent "temporary" flags that never get cleaned up.

Document all flag dependencies in the Flag Configuration section. Before enabling a dependent flag, verify its prerequisites are active. Avoid chains longer than two flags deep. If you find yourself with complex flag dependency trees, that is a signal your architecture needs refactoring rather than more flags.