What is the Serverless Framework and how does it work?

The Serverless Framework (serverless.com) is an open-source CLI tool and configuration system for deploying serverless applications across multiple cloud providers. It uses a serverless.yml file to define: functions (handler file path, events/triggers, memory, timeout), resources (DynamoDB tables, S3 buckets, SQS queues as CloudFormation resources), IAM permissions, environment variables, and plugins. Workflow: sls deploy packages your code, uploads to S3, generates CloudFormation, and deploys the entire stack. sls deploy function -f functionName does a fast single-function update. sls logs -f functionName streams CloudWatch logs. Key features: multi-provider support (AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare), rich plugin ecosystem (offline development, warmup, TypeScript), stages (dev/staging/prod environments), and sls offline for local Lambda simulation. The framework is technology-agnostic — you can mix Node.js and Python functions in one service.