diff --git a/.gemini/styleguide.md b/.gemini/styleguide.md
index a4315dda1..4ec455db1 100644
--- a/.gemini/styleguide.md
+++ b/.gemini/styleguide.md
@@ -1,4 +1,7 @@
-Scope: UI code, both React + TypeScript and CSS \
+# Gemini Code Assistant – Style Guide
+
+## General
+
 Focus: Correctness and Performance \
 Tone: In your review, be concise, direct and to the point.
 
@@ -7,6 +10,10 @@ Tone: In your review, be concise, direct and to the point.
   already seen it.
 - DO NOT introduce yourself.
 
+## Frontend / UI
+
+Scope: UI code, both React + TypeScript and CSS \
+
 Rules:
 
 - avoid setting state from useEffect instead of deriving it
@@ -21,3 +28,55 @@ Guidelines:
 
 - keystroke cost: prefer uncontrolled inputs; make controlled loops cheap
 - preload wisely: preload only above-the-fold images; lazy-load the rest
+
+## Backend
+
+Scope: Backend code, testing, and tooling
+
+### Best Practices
+
+These are things we want to encourage where it makes sense to avoid headaches in the future.
+
+#### Integration Testing
+
+Adding new functionality to the GraphQL API or another service should come with a set of integration
+tests within `/integration-tests` for testing that new component/functionality.
+
+We encourage avoiding testing low-level functionality (e.g., querying the database) if the
+functionality can also be verified at a high level (e.g., retrieving the database data via an API
+call). For critical features, it is acceptable to test low-level database in output in addition to
+high-level output.
+
+#### I/O and Configuration
+
+- Do not access `process.env` directly in your code.
+- Define environment variables in `packages/services/*/src/environment.ts` using Zod schemas
+- Parse and validate database results or network HTTP calls to services/third-party services using
+  Zod schemas.
+- Avoid using `fetch` or `node-fetch` directly, as it does not have built-in retries
+
+### Anti Patterns
+
+#### Adding new major logic to `/packages/services/storage`
+
+This module is considered legacy. Instead, we now have smaller classes within the corresponding
+GraphQL modules that hold the logic for interacting with Postgres.
+
+It is acceptable to alter existing implementations and fix bugs, but adding methods here when
+introducing new database tables is discouraged.
+
+## Releasing
+
+We use changesets for versioning.
+
+- Pull requests touching the Hive SDKs need to have a changeset (`/packages/libraries`) for the
+  corresponding scope.
+  - The changeset should describe the introduced changes, providing an overview of new API options.
+  - If needed: Provide examples for migrating from deprecated API options to newly introduced API
+    options.
+- Pull requests touching the services, migrations, or the dashboard (`/packages/migrations`,
+  `/packages/services`, `/packages/web/app`, `/docker`) should have a changeset for the `hive`
+  scope.
+  - These changesets should have the right amount of informational content for someone to understand
+    what this change introduces for their self-hosted Hive instance, without going into too much
+    internal technical detail.