API Governance that really works

Change Based Rules

optic diff openapi.yml --base release-1.0.2

Optic is the first API linter built with the API lifecycle in-mind. Many teams have turned on Spectral API design rules only to realize that most of the issues that get flagged are impossible to change without breaking the API consumers. This creates a huge amount of noise and leads many teams to turn off all but the most trivial design checks.

Optic is different. It understands how your API changes over time. You can apply your latest API standards to new API endpoints, and a looser set of standards to legacy endpoints that can’t change. We call this “Forwards-only governance” — Teams like Snyk use this approach to govern all their APIs (opens in a new tab). With Optic, developers only get actionable feedback from the tool and they don’t have to turn rules off to get CI to pass.

response.property.changed((before, after) => {
    if (before.required && !after.required)
        throw new Error("Making a response property optional is a breaking change")
})

Governing APIs after they ship

Optic has helped hundreds of teams ship better APIs with the first realistic, developer-friendly approach to API governance. Learn more from our talk at API Days Paris: