Throwaway Tooling

Over the last month, I have noticed an explosion of new tooling and libraries. I attribute a lot of this to LLM-driven development. What is also interesting is seeing these tools gain traction for a short time and then, for some, fizzle out. Combine this with the burnout we are seeing across the open source community I wonder where this leads.

Can I safely rely on a tool? Is this something I can recommend? People are working to solve burnout issues in OpenSource, but even if that were solved, the increase in tooling is still an interesting question. Sure, more competition and ideas are a good thing, and throwaway software has its place, but there are still downsides here. I also wonder if it's time to add age and release frequency to things like OpenAPI.tools.

An interesting time to be building software, for sure.

-- Alexander

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The API Roundup

API News, links, and tools from around the web

Doing GraphQL Is Governance by Default

A reflection on GraphQL and what actually makes it better than REST. GraphQL forces you to describe every type, every field and relationship. You can't ship a query until you do this. For REST, on the other hand, you can ship an endpoint straight away. Governance is something you must choose to do. The post raises a good point; however, I've seen many people half-ass a GraphQL schema, which led to major rewrites. Humans will always find a way to be lazy 😜.

Fastify V6

A popular Node.js web framework, Fastify version six, is now in Alpha. You can see a full list of what will be included in the V6 Planning Issue on GitHub. Great to see conversations in here about reducing the MB shipped as well

Miasma Supply Chain Attack on AsyncAPI

Can't believe I missed this one, but there was a supply chain attack on AsyncAPI back in July. This was a well-coordinated attack that used PR spam and exploited an unmerged security fix. The corrupted version was live for about four hours before it was taken down. Read the blog post for the full details and takeaways from the incident.

API Days

API Days has a few conferences coming up. They're in India in August and September; they are heading to Canada and England, and finally Australia in October. For some of these, they are still accepting talk submissions, so if you have something in mind, there's time to submit before it closes.

Browser to API

An interesting skill from Vercel's skill registry that consumes a browser trace to build an OpenAPI spec. Very useful for capturing an undocumented API, schemas or generating a coverage report.

OpenAPI Overlays for MCP and AI-Agent Enrichment

An interesting use for Overlays: creating better context for agents. Your base OpenAPI spec stays untouched, and you apply an overlay at build time so an MCP generator picks it up. A great way to avoid maintaining two documents.

APIs You Won't Hate

The latest from the team at API's You Won't Hate.

OpenAPI.tools

Our repository of great tools for building with OpenAPI. It's an Open Source, community maintained list built on Astro. If you're building with OpenAPI, check it out - and if your team builds tools for OpenAPI, pull requests are always welcome.

From the Community

Articles written and shared in our free Slack community.

APIs You (or Agents) Won't Hate

Frank Kilcommins shared his upcoming workshop at API's Day India on using specifications like OpenAPI, Overlay and Arazzo to design and govern APIs for developers and AI consumers. It's next week, so cutting it close, but there are still a few seats left.

Thanks so much to our members: Kin, Juxt, Alex R, Nolan S, Brandon K, Frank, James D, Bill D, and Abdelhadi D. Your support means the world to us!

✌️ Until next time,
Alexander, Phil & Mike