# Container Network Interface (CNI)

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/cni/  
**Website:** https://www.cni.dev/  
**APIs profiled:** 2

CNI (Container Network Interface) is a CNCF-incubating project that defines a specification and libraries for configuring network interfaces in Linux containers. It provides a simple exec/stdin interface between the container runtime and network implementation plugins, enabling pluggable networking for Kubernetes and other container orchestrators. The CNI spec defines four operations (ADD, DEL, CHECK, VERSION), a network configuration document format, and a plugin Result document. CNI also publishes a collection of reference plugins (bridge, ipvlan, macvlan, host-device, ptp, loopback) and meta-plugins (portmap, bandwidth, firewall, sbr).

## Kin Score — 22.7 / 100 (emerging)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 22.7).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 66.7 |
| Contract Quality | 25.4 |
| Governance | 9.8 |
| Contract Governance | 9.8 |
| Operational Transparency | 26.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 9.5 |
| Commercial Clarity | 15.8 |
| Access Clarity | 15.8 |

## Agent readiness — 3.0 (human-only)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | no |
| Agentic Access | no |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Freemium — onboarding: unknown, pricing: freemium, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (2)

- **CNI Specification** — The CNI specification defines the interface between container runtimes and network plugins. It specifies how runtimes invoke plugins via environment variables (CNI_COMMAND, CNI_...
- **CNI Reference Plugins** — A collection of reference and example networking plugins maintained by the containernetworking team that implement the CNI specification. Includes main plugins such as bridge, i...

## Security (1)

- **Cni Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS

## Plans (1)

- **Cni Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Cloud-Native, Containers, Incubating, Kubernetes, Networking, Plugins

---

Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/cni/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.