Cisco ACI

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is Cisco's data-center SDN fabric, programmed through the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and its object model, the Management Information Tree (MIT). Every APIC GUI, CLI and SDK action is executed through one REST interface: HTTPS requests to /api/mo/.json and /api/class/.json on the customer-operated controller, authenticated with a cookie-based aaaLogin session token and refreshed with aaaRefresh. The API is model-driven rather than OpenAPI-described — Cisco publishes an exhaustive object-model reference (the APIC Management Information Model Reference) plus a REST API configuration guide, a WebSocket (RFC 6455) event-subscription surface, an Ansible collection, a Terraform provider, a Python SDK (Cobra) and a public Postman workspace, but no anonymously fetchable OpenAPI, AsyncAPI or GraphQL contract.

Cisco ACI is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include SDN, Data Center, Networking, Fabric, and Automation.

The Cisco ACI catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification.

Cisco ACI’s developer surface includes developer portal, documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, support, engineering blog, authentication, and 36 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

55.7/100 strong ▬ flat Agent 36/100 agent ready saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessApproval

1 API 1 MCP Servers 2 Agent Skills

SDN Data Center Networking Fabric Automation Enterprise Network Automation Infrastructure Controller REST API

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 55.7/100 · strong

Contract Quality 8.3 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 15.0 / 17

Access Clarity 6.3 / 17

Operational Transparency 7.3 / 11

Contract Governance 1.9 / 10

Discoverability 6.1 / 9

Regulatory Posture 5.3 / 15

Agent readiness — 36/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 12 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)
Documented Reversibility +6 pts — a reversal operation in the contract, graded up when a window is documented too

5 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 39.0 — up to +15.3 composite points
Access Clarity scores 36.8 — up to +12.6 composite points
Contract Governance scores 18.2 — up to +9.8 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/cisco-aci/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/cisco-aci to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Cisco DevNet Ecosystem (builders on Meraki, Catalyst, ISE, ThousandEyes, Splunk)	undeclared	-	-	-
Data Center Tier Certification (facility certification, open hardware, efficiency bodies)	undeclared	-	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

measured — observed by APIs.io (documented)

Agent Skills

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Cisco APIC REST API

The Application Policy Infrastructure Controller REST API is the single programmatic interface into the ACI Management Information Tree. GET, POST and DELETE against /api/mo/.json

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

Community MCP Server for Cisco ACI

A stand-alone FastMCP server that sits between an MCP client and a customer's Cisco APIC controller, exposing ACI policy and fabric operations as MCP tools. It authenticates to ...

MCP SERVER

Agent Skills 2

Packaged agent skills for driving this provider's APIs from an AI assistant.

cisco-aci-provision-three-tier-application

AGENT SKILL

cisco-aci-triage-fabric-faults

AGENT SKILL

Cisco ACI API pricing

Rate limits

: 100000
: operator defined

Rate-limit details →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Cisco Aci Plans Pricing

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Cisco Aci Rate Limits

2 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Cisco Aci Finops

FINOPS

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Cisco Aci Event Subscriptions

ASYNCAPI

Security Posture 4

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Cisco Aci Authentication

3 schemes

SECURITY

Cisco Aci Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Cisco Aci Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Cisco Aci Trust Center

Common Criteria EAL2+ (ALC_FLR.2), Common Criteria EAL2, FIPS 140 (certificate 4747), FIPS 140

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 4

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

Portal

GettingStarted

Sandbox

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 4

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

MCPServer

WellKnown

LLMsTxt

AgentSkill

Design & Contract 7

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conventions

Idempotency

ErrorCatalog

Lifecycle

DataModel

Webhooks

Conformance

Scroll for all 7

Build 7

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

Postman

SourceCode

ToolCrosswalk

Packages

SDKs

CLI

Scroll for all 7

Access & Security 7

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

SecurityTxt

Authentication

Security

TrustCenter

Compliance

Scroll for all 7

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

RateLimits

Deprecation

ChangeLog

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Plans

Plans

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 3

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

ParentCompany

ParentCompany

Ansible

Ansible

Terraform

Terraform

Source (apis.yml)

aid: cisco-aci
name: Cisco ACI
description: 'Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is Cisco''s data-center SDN fabric, programmed through the Application
  Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and its object model, the Management Information Tree (MIT). Every APIC GUI, CLI
  and SDK action is executed through one REST interface: HTTPS requests to /api/mo/<dn>.json and /api/class/<class>.json on
  the customer-operated controller, authenticated with a cookie-based aaaLogin session token and refreshed with aaaRefresh.
  The API is model-driven rather than OpenAPI-described — Cisco publishes an exhaustive object-model reference (the APIC Management
  Information Model Reference) plus a REST API configuration guide, a WebSocket (RFC 6455) event-subscription surface, an
  Ansible collection, a Terraform provider, a Python SDK (Cobra) and a public Postman workspace, but no anonymously fetchable
  OpenAPI, AsyncAPI or GraphQL contract.'
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - ciscodevnet/mcp_server_cisco_aci_community
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: low
  source:
  - pricing
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: approval
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Requires approval
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - rate-limits
  - security
  - sandbox
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/cisco.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cisco-aci/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
type: Index
access: 3rd-Party
position: Consuming
x-type: company
x-source: cisco-family-buildout:2026-08-19
x-parent: cisco
x-relationship: product
x-contract-status: none
x-contract-note: No anonymously fetchable machine-readable contract found (probed 2026-08-19, real 404s). ACI is model-driven
  through the APIC object model rather than OpenAPI-described. API Evangelist has not authored a substitute.
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-08-19'
modified: '2026-08-19'
tags:
- SDN
- Data Center
- Networking
- Fabric
- Automation
- Enterprise
- Network Automation
- Infrastructure
- Controller
- REST API
tags_raw:
- SDN
- Data Center
- Networking
- Fabric
- Automation
- Enterprise
- Network Automation
- Infrastructure
- Controller
- REST API
- Data-Center
apis:
- aid: cisco-aci:cisco-apic-rest-api
  name: Cisco APIC REST API
  description: The Application Policy Infrastructure Controller REST API is the single programmatic interface into the ACI
    Management Information Tree. GET, POST and DELETE against /api/mo/<distinguished-name>.json (managed-object addressing)
    or /api/class/<class-name>.json (class queries) read and write policy — tenants, application profiles, EPGs, bridge domains,
    VRFs, contracts, filters, L3Outs — plus statistics, faults and audit records. Query scoping, filtering, ordering and pagination
    are expressed as URI parameters (query-target, target-subtree-class, rsp-subtree, order-by, page, page-size). The same
    endpoints support ?subscription=yes to open a WebSocket push-notification channel.
  humanURL: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/aci/
  baseURL: https://{apic-hostname}/api
  tags:
  - SDN
  - Data Center
  - Networking
  - Fabric
  - Automation
  tags_raw:
  - SDN
  - Data Center
  - Networking
  - Fabric
  - Automation
  - Data-Center
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/all/apic-rest-api-configuration-guide/cisco-apic-rest-api-configuration-guide-42x-and-later.html
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://developer.cisco.com/site/apic-mim-ref-api/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/aci/getting-started/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.cisco.com/
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/cisco-aci-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/cisco-aci-domain-security.yml
- type: ParentCompany
  url: https://apis.io/providers/cisco/
  name: Cisco
  x-relationship: product
  x-generated-by: cisco-family:2026-08-19
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://developer.cisco.com/site/aci/
- type: Portal
  url: https://developer.cisco.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/all/apic-rest-api-configuration-guide/cisco-apic-rest-api-configuration-guide-42x-and-later.html
- type: APIReference
  url: https://developer.cisco.com/site/apic-mim-ref-api/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/aci/getting-started/
- type: Support
  url: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/index.html
- type: Blog
  url: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/aci
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/CiscoDevNet
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/legal/terms-conditions.html
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/legal/privacy-full.html
- type: Postman
  url: https://www.postman.com/cisco-dcn-marketing-enablement/cisco-aci-public/overview
- type: Ansible
  url: https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/ansible-aci
- type: Terraform
  url: https://registry.terraform.io/providers/CiscoDevNet/aci/latest
- type: SourceCode
  url: https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/mcp_server_cisco_aci_community
- type: MCPServer
  url: mcp/cisco-aci-mcp.yml
- type: ToolCrosswalk
  url: mcp/cisco-aci-tool-crosswalk.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/cisco-aci-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  url: packages/cisco-aci-packages.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/cisco-aci-well-known.yml
- type: SecurityTxt
  url: well-known/cisco-aci-security.txt
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/cisco-aci-llms.txt
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/cisco-aci-authentication.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/cisco-aci-conventions.yml
- type: Idempotency
  url: conventions/cisco-aci-conventions.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/cisco-aci-problem-types.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/cisco-aci-rate-limits.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/cisco-aci-plans-pricing.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/cisco-aci-lifecycle.yml
- type: Deprecation
  url: lifecycle/cisco-aci-lifecycle.yml
- type: ChangeLog
  url: changelog/cisco-aci-changelog.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/cisco-aci-cli.yml
- type: Sandbox
  url: sandbox/cisco-aci-sandbox.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/cisco-aci-data-model.yml
- type: Webhooks
  url: asyncapi/cisco-aci-event-subscriptions.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/cisco-aci-conformance.yml
- type: Security
  url: security/cisco-aci-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: TrustCenter
  url: security/cisco-aci-trust-center.yml
- type: Compliance
  url: security/cisco-aci-trust-center.yml
- type: AgentSkill
  url: skills/_index.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-08-19'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 25
  pass: local-v1
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io

Cisco ACI API — frequently asked questions

Does Cisco ACI have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from Cisco ACI, including Cisco APIC REST API.

How do I authenticate with the Cisco ACI API?

Cisco ACI uses bearer-token authentication (3 schemes). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Cisco Aci Authentication.

Does Cisco ACI have an MCP server?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 MCP server for Cisco ACI: A stand-alone FastMCP server that sits between an MCP client and a customer's Cisco APIC controller, exposing ACI policy and fabric operations as MCP tools. It authenticates to the APIC with cookie-ba

Is the Cisco ACI API ready for AI agents?

Cisco ACI has a Kin Score of 55.7 out of 100 (strong) and an Agent Readiness score of 35.5 (agent-ready), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools →

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