api-evangelist

Sixteen years of API research as MCP tools — stories, areas, governance blocks & services

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    What data it sees

    Do you need an account

    No: the server works without sign-in

    Sixteen years of API research as MCP tools — stories, areas, governance blocks & services

    How to connect

    How to connect api-evangelist to Claude

    The server address to paste into Claude settings:

    https://mcp.apievangelist.com/mcp

    1. Open Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app).
    2. Go to Settings → Connectors.
    3. Click Add custom connector.
    4. Paste the server address copied below into Remote MCP server URL and click Add.
    5. In a chat, click + → Connectors and switch the new connector on.

    Custom connectors are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans (Free is limited to one). On Team and Enterprise an organization Owner adds the connector first under Organization settings → Connectors.

    Authorization

    After you click Add, a sign-in window for the service opens. Sign in with your own account and approve access. Claude never sees your password.

    How to connect api-evangelist to ChatGPT

    The server address to paste into ChatGPT settings:

    https://mcp.apievangelist.com/mcp

    1. Open ChatGPT in a browser (chatgpt.com). A Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan is required.
    2. Turn on developer mode once: Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Developer mode.
    3. Open Settings → Connectors and click Create.
    4. Fill in the form: Name (anything), Description (one line about what the service does), MCP server URL (copy it below).
    5. Under Authentication choose OAuth if the service requires sign-in, otherwise None. Click Create.
    6. In a new chat open + → Apps/Connectors and enable the connector.

    OpenAI has renamed this section before (Connectors → Apps/Plugins). If the label differs, search settings for "developer mode". On Business/Enterprise workspaces an admin must allow custom connectors first.

    Authorization

    On first use ChatGPT opens the service's sign-in window. Sign in and approve access.

    How to connect api-evangelist to Cursor

    The server address to paste into Cursor settings:

    https://mcp.apievangelist.com/mcp

    Fastest: click Open in Cursor below and confirm the prompt.

    Manually:

    1. In Cursor open Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP and click Add new global MCP server.
    2. Paste the JSON copied below into ~/.cursor/mcp.json (per project: .cursor/mcp.json in the repo root).
    3. Save the file. The server appears in the MCP list; authorize it there if asked.

    Authorization

    If the service needs sign-in, an authorize button appears next to the server in the MCP list.

    Server tool list (67)

    Raw names from tools/list. Only developers need these.

    get_overviewSTART HERE. What the API Evangelist network offers: sixteen years of API research as searchable stories, 77 topic areas, governance building blocks (guidance, rules, policies, standards, strategies), papers, conversations, and the consulting services Kin Lane offers teams. Returns counts, entry points, and how to engage.
    guide_topicPRO — Curated guide to one API topic (e.g. "gateways", "api governance", "discovery", "agents"). Bundles the matching topic area (with related areas), top guidance, rules, policies, and standards, relevant papers and recent stories, plus the API Evangelist services that can help a team with this topic.
    find_servicesThe services API Evangelist offers teams and customers — API strategy, governance, discovery, and evangelism engagements by Kin Lane. The front door to working with API Evangelist. (For the third-party vendor registry, use find_solutions.)
    get_serviceFull detail for one service offering by slug; include=["content"] inlines the full pitch.
    find_solutionsThe solutions registry — 740+ third-party API services and tools (gateways, portals, testing, monitoring, …) ranked by adoption across the companies API Evangelist tracks.
    get_solutionOne solution from the vendor registry by slug, with its website and adoption count.
    find_toolsThe open-source tooling registry — 400+ tools in use across the companies API Evangelist tracks, each with adoption counts and technology-radar placement.
    get_toolOne tool from the tooling registry by slug, with its website, adoption count, and radar ring.
    get_contactEvery way to reach API Evangelist — email, contact form, newsletter, GitHub, social channels, and postal mail.
    search_api_evangelistUnified search across the whole network: 5k+ stories, 77 topic areas, 2.5k governance building blocks, papers, conversations, videos, tools, timelines, services, and vocabulary. Filter with types (posts, areas, guidance, rules, policies, standards, strategies, schema, properties, experiences, lifecycle, conversations, videos, papers, services, solutions, tools, timelines, vocabulary).
    find_postsSearch or browse 5,100+ API Evangelist stories (2010–present); filter by year or tags.
    get_postOne story by slug (YYYY-MM-DD-slug); include=["content"] returns the full markdown body.
    find_areasThe 77 focused topic areas of the network (agents, gateways, security, …), each a subsite with its own catalog.
    get_areaOne topic area with its related-area graph resolved — walk the network from here.
    find_building_blocksSearch the governance building blocks by type: guidance (177), rules (617), policies (283), standards (432), strategies (75), schema (11), properties (790), experiences (46), lifecycle (29).
    get_building_blockOne building block by type + slug; include=["content"] returns the full body.
    find_conversationsAPI Evangelist Conversations — recorded discussions with API practitioners (guest, company, YouTube/SoundCloud links).
    get_conversationOne conversation with guest detail and media links; include=["content"] returns the writeup.
    find_papersAPI Evangelist papers — single-PDF deep dives on one practice or topic, with outlines.
    get_paperOne paper with its full outline and purchase/landing URL.
    find_videosThe API Evangelist video library — interviews and discussions from across the API space, searchable by transcript.
    get_videoOne video by slug with its YouTube id; include=["content"] returns the full transcript.
    get_timelineOne of the four research timelines in chronological order: api (the moments that shaped web APIs), resources (which digital resources became APIs and when), industries (the industrial history framing API infrastructure), people (the people who made compute and APIs possible).
    get_guidance_sectionOne editorial guidance section as a list: history, technology, business, politics, governance, or evangelism — the six lenses API Evangelist organizes guidance through.
    find_vocabularyThe API vocabulary — thousands of resources, actions, personas, domains, schemas, and tags extracted from the API landscape. Filter by category.
    get_feedsThe static machine-readable feeds every network site publishes (JSON, APIs.json, zero-auth) — the no-key alternative to this API.
    find_tagsBrowse and rank the network tag taxonomy — every subject tag across 16k+ docs, by frequency or breadth (how many content types use it). Search with q. The map of what API Evangelist covers.
    get_tagOne tag with its per-type counts and everything it labels across the whole network (stories, areas, guidance, papers, …). Filter with types.
    find_relatedGiven any doc (type + slug), the most related content across the whole network, ranked by shared-tag relevance (rare, specific tags weigh most). "More like this," across stories, areas, guidance, papers, conversations, and more.
    get_statsPRO — catalog intelligence: per-type counts, stories-per-year, and the top tags by reach across the network.
    find_company_insightsBrowse profiled companies (Fortune 1000 + API providers) by name; ranked by technology-readiness signal. Free.
    insights_dimensionsCross-section ranking of the 40 tracked investment dimensions (AI, cloud, governance, …) by company signal. Free.
    insights_adoptionServices, tools, or standards ranked by how many companies adopt them. Free.
    get_company_insightFull demand-side profile for one company: 40-dimension readiness, adopted stack, per-quarter history. Pro.
    company_gapsA company's weakest investment dimensions — where it is thin. Pro.
    company_dimensionsPRO — a company's investment dimensions, each read AGAINST the measured cohort: the cohort median, mean and max, this company's rank and percentile, and an index where 1.0 is exactly typical. A raw dimension score is unreadable on its own; these are the columns that make it mean something.
    company_peersPRO — the companies most comparable to this one (same sub-sector where the data supports it, same industry otherwise), each with signal totals and top dimensions. The response says which basis it used.
    company_whitespacePRO — what this company's peers run that it does not, ranked by how many peers carry it. The opening list for a vendor selling into the account.
    company_signalsPRO — the company's adopted stack entity by entity (services, tools, standards), each with how many companies across the cohort carry it and its radar ring.
    find_entitiesBrowse the demand-side entity catalog — every service, tool and standard companies are measured against, ranked by how many carry it. Free. This is the left-hand side of the inversion: pick an entity here, then call entity_demand to see WHO.
    entity_demandPRO — THE INVERSION. Every other insights tool runs company -> stack; this one runs stack -> companies: which companies show demand for a given service, tool or standard, broken down by industry. This is the prospecting query — "who should I be selling this to" — and it exists in no report, bundle or page. Returns BOTH the authoritative company count and the companies it can actually name, with the basis difference explained.
    find_measured_standardsThe standards bodies API Evangelist has actually MEASURED — repositories, maturity, governance, coalition. Distinct from find_standards, which searches 613 catalog entries describing what a standard IS. Free.
    standard_adoptionHow far a standards body actually got: repositories published, how many graduated past unclassified and the resulting share, release cadence, contributor count — with the provenance of every figure and an explicit list of what is NOT measured. Free, because a specification is a public good.
    standard_coalitionWho is actually behind a standard: the governing bodies and their membership, the working groups, the member companies, and the named people. Carries the caveats where our machine-readable source disagrees with the body's own published roster. Free.
    standard_repositoriesEvery repository a standards body publishes, with maturity, stars, forks, open issues and archived status. Free.
    validate_apiLint an OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, Arazzo, or JSON Schema document against the curated best-of-breed ruleset (Spectral) and return the findings. Pass your own `ruleset` to run rules you own instead of the catalog — which is what you should do before gating on anything.
    api_coverageMeasure how much of an API description your governance actually inspects — coverage by section, each rule's reach, and the rules that match nothing. Like test coverage, one altitude up.
    reconcile_waiversReconcile a waivers file against lint output: suppress sanctioned violations and surface the expired, stale, and expiring ones. Returns the effective failing set a build should gate on.
    governance_reportTurn Spectral findings into a self-contained HTML governance report — severity summary, grouped by rule, framed toward progress.
    verify_certificateRe-verify a governance certificate against the API it attests to. If the API drifted or the certificate was forged, verification fails.
    classify_api_fieldsInventory the PII, secret, and sensitive fields an OpenAPI exposes, across parameters and request/response schemas. Run this before exposing an API to agents.
    diff_api_versionsCompare two OpenAPI versions and classify every change as breaking, non-breaking, or an addition — at path, operation, parameter, request-body, and response granularity.
    api_scorecardScore an API's maturity 0-100 with a letter grade across design, governance coverage, documentation, and (from an apis.json) discoverability, agent-readiness, and operations. Pass your own `ruleset` — a score against rules you never adopted means little.
    govern_estatePRO — Run the core governance checks across a WHOLE SET of internal APIs and roll them up: per-API score/grade/errors/PII, plus estate aggregates (avg score, grade distribution, APIs with PII/secrets) and a worst-first punch-list of what to fix. Pass `apis` ([{id, document}]) and your own `ruleset`. detail:true adds per-API dimensions.
    deprecation_postureReport every deprecated operation and whether it actually announces a sunset. The ones that go quiet are the ones that break consumers.
    validate_onboardingValidate an API Onboarding Descriptor (AID) against the api-commons schema and report which optional sections it fills in.
    certify_apiIssue a tamper-evident governance certificate attesting an API passed a named ruleset at a profile threshold. A SHA-256 fingerprint lets anyone re-verify it.
    export_agent_rulesTurn a governance ruleset into agent-native guidance — an AGENTS.md block, a system-prompt set, a per-rule remediation pack, and a digest — so agents follow the rules while authoring, not after linting.
    audit_pipelineScore a repository's Spectral CI setup against an 8-point maturity rubric and return a prioritized punch-list. Pass a public `repo` ("owner/name") or `files`.
    forge_mcp_toolsFrom an OpenAPI, forge an MCP server design, per-operation tools, Agent Skills, an enriched OpenAPI, a server.json, and apis.json properties.
    gate_agent_contextChoose which operations and fields an API exposes to agents and emit a governed Tyk OpenAPI, an MCP tool manifest, and a Spectral ruleset with PII and secret checks.
    apply_overlayApply an OpenAPI Overlay to a document and report what each action matched. Use it for deprecation and migration choreography without forking the contract.
    mock_payloadsGenerate an example request and success-response payload for every operation from its schema.
    code_snippetsGenerate runnable curl, JavaScript, and Python samples for every operation, with path params filled in and a realistic body.
    score_reusabilityScore how reusable a set of APIs is and detect duplication across them — the anti-sprawl view of an estate.
    map_api_experienceMap each REST operation to its MCP tool and Agent Skill — the API -> MCP -> Agent-Skill chain — from an APIs.json, with a free/paid coverage scorecard and a flow map.
    generate_agent_descriptorGenerate an API's llms.txt and an AGENTS.md consumption contract — base URL, auth, the operation table, deprecated operations to avoid, and usage rules.