APIiden

APIiden is a conceptual software framework for identifying, classifying, and cataloging APIs across software systems. It provides a unified identifier system and metadata extraction to support inventory, governance, and change management. The project aims to standardize how APIs are discovered, described, and related to consumers and providers.

Core capabilities include discovery of API endpoints from source code, configuration, and network traces, parsing of common API formats such as OpenAPI, RAML, and GraphQL schemas, and generation of stable identifiers. It supports fingerprinting of interfaces, version resolution, deprecation signaling, and traceability to source repositories.

The architecture is modular, consisting of a core engine, parser adapters for languages and specifications, a fingerprinting module, and a registry-like backend that stores APIiden records. It exposes a programmatic API and a command-line tool for integration with CI/CD pipelines, monitoring systems, and service registries.

Typical use cases include building an up-to-date API inventory, enforcing governance and compliance, tracking dependencies and licenses, detecting API drift, and planning migrations or deprecations. It can integrate with service meshes, container registries, and issue trackers.

APIiden originated as a concept in API management discussions and has seen varying levels of community interest. As a hypothetical project, it serves as a reference design for how organizations might approach API discovery and cataloging.