API Resilience

The conversation explores and bridges the external imperative of publishing your API menu for LLM discovery with the internal requirement of defining your organizational capabilities to achieve actual business outcomes.

Contrasting the strict constraints of structured data with the velocity of lightweight formats, and how both prepare content for the future.  Conversation with Paul Coinaud, Senior Manager of Documentation at ANSYS (recently acquired by Synopsys). In this episode we talk about the critical need for LLM-ready content much enriched with structured metadata and discusses how standards like iiRDS and...

Discover how technical writers are using minimalism and DITA architecture to guardrail AI models and reduce hallucinations. This episode explores structuring technical content for LLM intent matching , the fascinating paralels of stigmergy and guiding autonomous AI agents , and some of what Ravi and Deepak are working on: AI style guides and knowledge graphs to optimize AI behavior.

Join host Kristof Van Tomme with Jean Dulau and Julien Rateau from Google Cloud’s Apigee team for a special live episode marking 10 years of our partnership that started with a meeting at APIdays and built up to shaping developer portals and API management worldwide. The conversation then looks forward, exploring the new era of AI and the urgent need for connectivity, governance, and managing comp...

Discussing his recent book "Not Artificial, Not Intelligent", Django Beatty cites high failure rates and combinatorial explosion issues. Thoughtful essays like "The Pachinko Machine" and "The Machine Can't Plan" frame AI as a useful cognitive exoskeleton requiring human expertise: can be read as an antidote to extreme views. The episode concludes that the true val...

In this episode, Alicia Miller returns to share exciting insights about her new role as Head of Growth Strategy at Aduna Global. The discussion explores Aduna's mission to accelerate the telco network API market by reducing friction and commercializing APIs that are difficult for individual telcos to manage due to antitrust concerns and technical complexities.   About Alicia Miller: Global str...

OAI ambassador Erik Wilde explores how new specs like Arazzo and MCP are shaping AI-driven workflows, and why APIs may soon be your last line of defense. 

In this episode, our guest is Michaela Halliwell, Senior Platform Product Manager at HCSS, a key player in the heavy civil construction industry. The discussion emphasizes applying a product management approach to APIs, focusing on solving customer problems and making them consumable. She also discusses the importance of governance starting from day one, balancing flexibility with consistency acro...

In this episode, Kristof speaks with Ronald Ashri, co-founder of OpenDialog, to unpack the realities behind the AI hype. Drawing from his background in multi-agent systems and his journey through academia, startups, and the semantic web, Ronald shares why truly resilient AI isn't about building one model to rule them all—it’s about constraining powerful systems like LLMs to ensure reliability,...

In our conversation with Daniel Beck, we discuss creating documentation project archetypes to aid open source and enterprise projects in structuring their documentation efforts. The episode also delves into the evolving role of technical writers in the age of AI and the increasing importance of documentation for API usability. Further resources:Pattern languages and semantic caching - Discussion w...

In the second part of this thought-provoking exploration, the discussion turns towards dissecting the capabilities and limitations of AI, particularly Large Language Models. The episode highlights comparisons between human and artificial intelligence, as well as LLMs functioning as sophisticated indexing or caching mechanisms for information.

How do constraints increase opportunities by introducing boundaries? What challenges do Content Management Systems face in the age of AI? In this episode, Jeff Eaton (Partner at Autogram) discusses the complexities of building and managing digital systems, drawing on a wide range of theoretical frameworks to understand underlying patterns. The episode highlights the continuous evolution of technol...

How has the concept of structured content evolved, and how does it relate to APIs? How is the internet shifting from a focus on publishing content to enabling interactions? In this special episode, Kristof Van Tomme (Co-founder and CEO of Pronovix) and Christoph Weber (Solutions Architect at Pronovix) invited Jeff Eaton (Partner at Autogram) to discuss the implications of increasing complexity, as...

If information is scattered across all the different sections of a developer portal, how can you make it easy for developers to find exactly what they are looking for? Is AI really the answer to challenges in data exploration? In this episode, Praneet Singh (Product Manager at Intuit) shares valuable insights about improving findability, as well as the emerging personas on developer portals and ho...

Are there negative values when opening up API programs? Can an AI agent be more than a virtual co-worker that works under supervision? In this episode, Zdenek Nemec (Founder and CTO at Superface) and Kristof Van Tomme explore the attention economy and the effects of shutting down successful social networks for profit. They also delve into the role of AI and how AI agents can change the way we use...

In this episode, David O’Neill (APIContext) reflects on the current API landscape through the lens of global market trends and recurring cycles in the tech space. Commenting on the current AI boom, David shares some cautionary advice about AI hallucinations and the importance of an internal source of truth.

A research-heavy field can be difficult to navigate for the layperson. In this case, documentation is an invaluable bridge connecting services and customers. In this episode, Daria Lutchenko (UP42) explains the value of concise and coherent documentation that allows providers to keep up their end of the “social contract”.

How can one ensure that their business remains sustainable? What are the key principles of value-based selling? Is it possible to create a fair distribution of value? In this episode, Stefan Verstraeten (Head of Value at TomTom) discusses these questions, and explains how complexity science as a mental model can help to better understand the way things work. He also narrates his journey to superfo...

APIs are undergoing a transformative shift, and the mindset surrounding APIs is also evolving. In this episode, Kristof Van Tomme is joined by Alicia Miller and Joshua Markham (Verizon), and they explore the concept of APIs as utilities, what it means to approach APIs with a utility mindset, as well as the future of applications in the age of LLMs.

The key to successful architecture isn’t the beautiful design with the perfect abstractions; it is more about knowing what can go wrong and where the fragile areas are. In this episode, Barry O’Reilly (Founder at Black Tulip Technology) shares his experience as an architect with Kristof Van Tomme and points out how residuality theory can help us better understand our industry.  They discuss topics...

The way we think about the future of APIs can take many different forms. In this episode, Marsh Gardiner and Kristof Van Tomme approach the subject from several angles. They discuss questions like: Why can we say that APIs are interface utilities? How does the network effect work? Can we call APIs infrastructure? Marsh's #APIFutures post:  https://sociotechnical.org/archive/evolving-api-produc...

In this episode, Koichi Shiroma (Principal Consultant) narrates his journey of how his team implemented an interface portal. With Kristof Van Tomme, they discuss what can be the business drivers for interface portals and what obstacles one has to overcome during the implementation. Resources: https://pronovix.com/articles/apis-are-interface-utilities https://www.amazon.com/Books-Alicia-Juarrero/s?...

In this episode, Michael Hibay (API Platform Architect at WSFS Bank) and Mike Amundsen (Amundsen,com, Inc.) deep dive into the topic of hypermedia, complex systems, Domain Driven Design, and generative AI. They explore the questions of what hypermedia API is, what an API affordance catalog can be, and how language models can be applied on the client’s side.  Additional Sources:  Design and Build G...

Why can we treat Kubernetes as an open standard that enables computing to become a utility? In this episode, Viktor Farcic (Developer Advocate at Upbound) explains why we can say that Kubernetes is an extensible API, and highlights that an API has no tangible usefulness by itself. With Kristof Van Tomme, they also deep dive into the fundamentals of a good portal. Further Resource: DevOps Toolkit Y...

The final installment of the Complexity series ends this collection of interviews on a high note. In this episode, we dive deeper into the practical application of social practice theory, the optimization of transformative processes, and the value of maturity with the help of our guest, Chris McDermott (Lean Agile Coach & Principal Consultant at Contextualise) and hosts Kristof van Tomme (CEO...