API Evangelist Papers

The unglamorous prerequisite under governance, security, and AI — inventory as archaeology, the taxonomy of the dead, machine-readable discovery on...

The real governance stack — landscape mapping, OpenAPI, JSON Schema, policies and Spectral rules, design-first vs. code-first, Git, IDE, CI/CD, shi...

The technology was always the easy part — belief before adoption, internal-first, the blog as a compounding asset, outreach and onboarding, communi...

Treat MCP as part of your API operations, not a science project — the three provider archetypes, the build → auth → curate → host → govern → distri...

The portal is not your API and not your product — it's the human-readable front door to an operation you should already be running, and now it has ...

Every API in the apis.io catalog carries a 0–100 composite score across six facets. This is the whole methodology, in the open — what each facet me...

The protocol, the architecture, and the wave you rode in on are not what decide whether an API succeeds — managing the whole lifecycle, end to end,...

The AI labs are the most pricing-transparent class of API provider there is — and that transparency is the lesson. Real per-token rates across the ...

Communication APIs are where the industry learned to meter — and where the headline rate is almost never the real rate. Real per-message, per-email...

Payment APIs charge a percentage of the value moved, not the cost of service — the purest take-rate model in the API economy, and where AI pricing ...

You should not be building integrations anymore — you should be describing them. An integration is two ends and a wire; both ends already publish O...

Your Spectral ruleset can reach the IDE and the pipeline — but not the conversation, which is now where APIs get designed. Wrapping your governance...

The first API Evangelist bundle — a paper clipped to a working APIs.json artifact. An operation is a set of capabilities, and every capability wort...

Reuse fails before the first line of code — a measurable, three-axis framing of API reusability (design, operational, composability), semantic dupl...

A census, not a survey — 1,005 public GitHub repositories running Spectral in CI, read and characterized. The finding: most teams turned the linter...

The five-year API maturity journey is now a five-week onboarding, and the team shipping its first public API is staring at OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Ar...

The discipline behind the emerging "context engineer" role — context as a governed, lifecycle artifact, not a prompt you tune. Ownership of the REA...

The assumption that AI will figure out how to use your MCP server is wrong. Reference documentation describes the interface; operational documentat...

We enforce coding standards and CI gates on code, and nothing on the Markdown files that now drive agent behavior — README, CONTRIBUTING, AGENTS.md...

Fifty Australian banks, scored on the same rubric as Stripe — read straight from the machine-readable evidence, not the marketing. The single findi...

Fifty-eight market data providers, scored on the same rubric as Stripe, with the report concentrated on the twenty-eight in the upper three bands —...

Andreessen Horowitz's public investment list resolves to more than a thousand companies; 242 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored her...

Y Combinator's public company list resolves to more than eight hundred companies; 190 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on th...

Insight Partners' public portfolio resolves to a large book of software companies; 214 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on t...

Sixty UK banks and building societies, scored on the same rubric as Stripe — read straight from the machine-readable evidence, not the marketing. T...

Accel's public portfolio resolves to a large set of companies; 196 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubric appli...

500 Global's public portfolio resolves to a very large book; 225 of its companies ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubri...

Techstars has run accelerator programs across dozens of cities for more than a decade, and its public portfolio resolves to 141 companies that ship...

Lightspeed Venture Partners' public portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 144 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the...

Bessemer Venture Partners' public portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 128 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the s...

Battery Ventures' portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 108 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubric appli...

GV — Alphabet's independent venture arm — resolves to a broad, later-stage, category-leader book in the catalog, and 121 of its companies ship a pu...

General Catalyst's public portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 114 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubr...

The SoftBank Vision Fund is the largest pool of growth capital ever assembled for technology; 87 of its portfolio companies ship a public API, and ...

Index Ventures's public portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 98 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubric ...

Norwest Venture Partners' public portfolio resolves into the catalog, and 85 of its companies ship a public API — every one scored here on the same...

Bain Capital Ventures's portfolio resolves into the catalog, and 79 of its companies ship a public API — every one scored here on the same rubric a...

Kleiner Perkins's public portfolio resolves into the catalog to 63 companies that ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubri...

Redpoint Ventures's public portfolio resolves to 67 companies that ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubric applied to St...

Menlo Ventures led the round in Anthropic — the company that authored the Model Context Protocol the entire agentic ecosystem now standardizes on. ...

Seedcamp's public portfolio resolves to a broad list of European seed and early-stage companies; 74 of them ship a public API, and every one is sco...

Speedinvest's public portfolio resolves to hundreds of companies; 56 of them ship a public API, and every one is scored here on the same rubric app...

Canaan Partners' public portfolio resolves into the catalog, and 38 of its companies ship a public API — every one scored here on the same rubric a...

Partech is one of Europe's longest-running venture platforms, and of its companies that resolve into the catalog, 38 ship a public API — every one ...

Bloomberg Beta is a deliberately small, early-stage fund, and its public portfolio resolves to 37 companies that ship a public API — every one scor...

DCVC — Data Collective Venture Capital — backs hard science and hard infrastructure, and its public portfolio resolves to just 36 companies that sh...

Qiming Venture Partners' public portfolio resolves into the catalog, and 13 of its companies ship a public API — every one scored here on the same ...

Sequoia Capital's public portfolio resolves to 118 companies in the catalog; a 19-company core was deepened outward to 72 that ship a public API, a...

The flagship that sits above the Portfolio Report series. Where each per-fund report answers "how good is this fund's API book?", this one answers ...

A hundred and thirteen US institutions — money-center banks, super-regionals and regionals, the fifteen largest credit unions, the neobanks, the ba...

Forty-two Canadian institutions — the Big Six, the other Schedule I and II banks, the digital arms, the crown bank, the largest credit unions and c...

Sixty-eight US-headquartered payment companies — the four card networks, the acquirer/processor layer, the modern PSP and issuer-processor frontier...

Thirty-two UK-headquartered payment companies — the open-banking payment-initiation frontier (TrueLayer, Token.io, Yapily, Volt, GoCardless), card ...

Twenty Australian-headquartered payment companies — ASX-listed merchant acquirers (Tyro, Zeller), the NPP-native money-movement pack (Zepto, Azupay...

Fourteen Canadian-headquartered payment companies — the global-scale exception Nuvei, incumbent acquirer Moneris, the API-native SMB and embedded-f...

Seventy-seven US healthcare companies — the EHR duopoly and its challengers, the HL7 FHIR interoperability and health-data networks, the payer/clai...

Thirteen UK healthcare organizations — NHS England's national FHIR API platform (PDS, GP Connect, EPS, e-Referrals), the GP-clinical duopoly (EMIS ...

Twelve Australian healthcare organizations — the Australian Digital Health Agency's My Health Record and national infrastructure, the GP-software d...

Ten Canadian healthcare organizations — Canada Health Infoway's pan-Canadian FHIR terminology stewardship, the consolidating incumbents (TELUS Heal...

Seventy-nine US insurance organizations — the national P&C and life carriers (State Farm, Allstate, GEICO, Travelers, MetLife, Cigna, Humana), the ...

Thirty-five UK insurance organizations — the composite and specialty carriers (Aviva, Admiral, Direct Line, RSA, Hiscox, Beazley, Convex), the life...

Twenty Australian insurance organizations — the general-insurance oligopoly (IAG, Suncorp, QBE, Youi, Budget Direct), the separately regulated priv...

Twenty Canadian insurance organizations — the P&C oligopoly (Intact, Definity, Co-operators, Desjardins, Wawanesa, CAA), the life and health trio a...

Eighty-three telecom organizations worldwide — mobile network operators across every major market (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Deutsche Tele...

Forty-five US real estate organizations — the portals (Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, Homes.com), the listing-data infrastructure that federates roug...

Twenty-four UK real estate organizations — the portal duopoly (Rightmove, Zoopla) and its agent-owned challenger OnTheMarket, the agency CRM layer ...

Eighteen Australian real estate organizations — the portal duopoly (REA Group's realestate.com.au and Domain) and challenger View.com.au, PEXA's el...

Fourteen Canadian real estate organizations — CREA and REALTOR.ca with the Data Distribution Facility that syndicates member boards' listings in pl...

One hundred and eight headless providers scored on the same rubric as Stripe, read straight from the machine-readable evidence — thirty-four headle...

Twenty-four Australian energy organizations — the retailers bound by the Consumer Data Right (AGL, Origin, EnergyAustralia, Alinta, Red, Simply, Po...

Sixty US energy organizations — the investor-owned utilities that bill most of the country (Duke, Southern, Dominion, Exelon, AEP, NextEra, Entergy...

Twenty-six UK energy organizations — the suppliers (Octopus, Centrica's British Gas, EDF, E.ON Next, OVO, ScottishPower, Good Energy, Utilita), the...

Eighteen Canadian energy organizations — the provincial Crown corporations and investor-owned utilities (Hydro-Québec, BC Hydro, SaskPower, Manitob...

Thirty US travel and aviation organizations — Sabre in the GDS oligopoly, the carriers (United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska), the O...

Fourteen UK travel and aviation organizations, scored on the same rubric as Stripe and read straight from the machine-readable evidence. They are T...

Eleven Australian travel and aviation organizations — Qantas and Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Rex, the agency and TMC layer (Flight Centre, Helloworl...

Nine Canadian travel and aviation organizations — Air Canada and WestJet, Porter and Transat, the Crown corporation VIA Rail, the Montreal API-nati...

Account intelligence on JPMorgan Chase for the go-to-market team selling into it. The account is read from two directions and the gap between them ...

Account intelligence on Salesforce for the go-to-market team selling into it — and a genuinely different profile from most Fortune 1000 accounts. S...

Account intelligence on Autodesk for the go-to-market team selling into it. Autodesk is one of the strongest combined profiles in the Fortune 1000:...

Account intelligence on Adobe for the go-to-market team selling into it. Adobe ranks first of 932 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment — 11.5× t...

Account intelligence on ServiceNow for the go-to-market team selling into it. ServiceNow ranks 66th of 932 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment ...

CAMARA is the only sector-wide API standard scored so far that an industry built for itself with no regulatory mandate behind it — specifications a...

Account intelligence on Palo Alto Networks for the go-to-market team selling into it. It ranks 20th of 932 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment ...

The largest cohort ever scored in this series — 4,904 artificial-intelligence companies, one in five of every provider in the catalog, assembled by...

Account intelligence on Oracle for the go-to-market team selling into it. Its public API surface scores 67.2 on the Kin Score, fourteenth in a 39-c...

2,877 developer tools and DevOps companies scored — the cloud platforms (Google Cloud Platform 81.0, the highest score in the entire catalog, Fastl...

Account intelligence on Avalara for the go-to-market team selling into it. Avalara ranks 150th of 932 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment — 4.6...

1,964 cybersecurity and identity companies scored — identity and access (Okta 71.4, 1Password 71.7, Auth0 67.2, WorkOS 65.5, Stytch 66.8, Kinde 69....

Account intelligence on Postman for the go-to-market team selling into it. Postman ranks 188th of 932 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment — 4.0...

The second API Evangelist Standard Report, and the largest independent corpus of real-world OpenAPI anyone has measured: 14,257 documents published...

Account intelligence on Workday for the go-to-market team selling into it. Workday ranks 51st of 819 Fortune 1000 companies on AI investment — 8.1×...

The fourth API Evangelist Standard Report, and the largest measurement in this research line by two orders of magnitude. JSON Schema is the most wi...

The fifth API Evangelist Standard Report, on the fastest-adopted specification in the history of APIs. MCP's first dated version shipped 2024-11-05...

The sixth API Evangelist Standard Report. OpenID Connect is the most successful identity protocol ever deployed — every Sign in with Google, every ...

The seventh API Evangelist Standard Report, on the authorization framework the API economy is built on. Measured across the security schemes of 14,...

Agentic Resource Discovery is nine weeks old, and it is the first credible answer to the question every agentic protocol skipped: before your agent...

A complete reference to the markdown layer — the 2004 origin and the four formats it borrowed from, the twenty-year specification vacuum that Commo...

The ninth API Evangelist Standard Report, on the Agent2Agent Protocol — the Linux Foundation standard for how independent AI agents discover and de...

Thirty-five API management vendors scored on the same public rubric as everyone else in the catalog, read straight from the machine-readable eviden...

1,138 supply chain and procurement companies scored — the parcel and last-mile platforms (Onfleet 68.3, parcelLab 67.5, Sendcloud 67.0, Sendle 62.6...

869 provider records across the compute stack scored on the same rubric as Stripe — the chip designers, foundries, EDA vendors and process-equipmen...

1,234 digital health companies scored — the FHIR-native backends and record networks (Medplum 67.3, Aidbox 58.5, 1upHealth 58.2, Particle Health 54...

1,298 data and analytics companies scored — warehouses, lakehouses and query engines (Databricks 72.2, Azure Synapse 71.2, Amazon Redshift 62.2, Bi...

1,272 marketing and advertising companies scored — the buying platforms (Google Ads 64.9, Display & Video 360 61.5, Search Ads 360 61.1, Campaign M...

1,144 blockchain and digital-asset companies scored — chains and layer 2s (Solana 71.8, Aptos 60.7, Algorand 59.0, Arweave 58.5, Akash, Hedera, Ava...

Twenty-nine API documentation vendors and open source projects scored on the same public rubric as everyone else in the catalog, read straight from...

814 education and EdTech organizations scored — learning platforms (Canvas LMS 71.7, Adobe Captivate 66.5, Pluralsight 62.5, Google Classroom 60.0,...

415 legal and compliance companies scored — e-signature and document automation (DocuSign 68.6, SignNow 61.7, PandaDoc 59.2, DocuSeal 58.4, Anvil 5...

Thirty-seven API testing tools and platforms scored on the same public rubric as everyone else in the catalog, read straight from the machine-reada...

Thirty-five API clients read against the same public rubric applied to everyone else in the catalog — the client platforms that operate a hosted se...

546 robotics and autonomous systems companies scored — industrial and warehouse robotics (Rockwell Automation 49.4, Inductive Automation 43.7, ABB ...

Forty identity, authentication and authorization providers scored on the same public rubric applied to Stripe and to every bank, insurer and teleco...

Everything the industry knows about API change assumes a consumer who reads. Three layers govern change in MCP, the discipline degrades as it appro...