Require that every API is registered in a central, searchable catalog with enough metadata that a developer can find it, understand it, and decide to use it without asking anyone. I care deeply about this because an API nobody can discover might as well not exist, and the biggest source of waste I see is teams rebuilding capabilities that already ship down the hall. The catalog should carry the name, description, owner, status, and links to docs and the contract, and it should be kept current as a condition of shipping. A good catalog is where reuse, self-service, and real API-as-a-product culture begin.
API Catalog (Experience)
Strategies
APIs Are Discoverable Through a Central Catalog
All APIs must be registered in a central catalog or registry with consistent metadata, tags, and descriptions, ensuring that producers and consumers can find existing APIs before building new ones,...
Experiences
Discovery
The average enterprise maintains approximately 0.5 APIs per employee, making it a constant challenge to track the growing inventory of HTTP APIs being produced and consumed. Enterprises often addre...
Reuse
The reuse of APIs in applications and integrations, but also in the producing of APIs plays an important part in the overall experience of teams who are producing and consuming APIs. The reuse of A...
Self-Service
Self-service is the experience of a consumer being able to discover, access, and integrate an API without having to talk to a human. Portals, sign-up flows, documentation, and keys let developers g...
Lifecycle
captive_portal Portal Beta
The portal is the front door to an API. It is where consumers discover, learn, authenticate, and get to their first successful call. I judge a portal by how fast a new developer can go from landing...
travel_explore Discovery Production
Discovery is how APIs get found and reused instead of rebuilt. APIs.json, catalogs, and search make the APIs I operate visible to the people who need them. Good discovery is what turns a pile of AP...
