I stayed up way too late playing with some of the new features in Stoplight.io. If you aren't familiar with what the Stoplight team has been cooking up--they have been hard at work crafting a pretty slick set of API modeling tools. I feel the platform provides me with a new way to look at the API life cycle--a perspective that spans multiple dimensions, including design, definition, virtualization, documentation, testing, discovery, orchestration, and client.
Stoplight.io gives me a pretty powerful platform for managing, interfacing, sharing, collaborating, publishing, understanding, and evolving my API designs and definitions. You can begin modeling your APIs by importing an existing OpenAPI Spec, RAML, or Postman collection, or get to work modeling a new or existing API via the Stoplight client interface, which is just one tool in the Stoplight modeling toolbox. Additionally, I am able to create separate work spaces and import the OpenAPI Spec for all my own APIs, as well as the APIs that I depend on in the API space < this organization is very important to me.
Stoplight.io provides me with a new way to approach the organization of my API design and definitions, but the biggest impact for me, is when it comes to modeling the existing APIs out there. I've been working on automating the generation of OpenAPI Spec definitons of the APIs I use, as I use them--something that is two separate tasks at the moment. Stoplight.io does this, but does it waaaay better than what I have been doing, quietly crafting the OpenAPI Spec for any API I am using, in the background when you have Stoplight API discovery mode turned on, and the Prism API Proxy on.
I am enjoying the view of the API space that Stoplight.io is giving me. I got completely lost last night improving on my API designs, profiling other APIs in the space that were already in my work queue, and mapping out the dark APIs behind the mobile apps that I depend on (something I will write about separately). I am curious to see what API designers, and architects do with StopLight--I feel like it has the potential to shift the landscape pretty significantly, something I haven't seen any API service provider do in a while.
