ReadMe is a developer hub platform that helps companies design, document, and operate their APIs. The platform combines hosted API reference (OpenAPI-driven), guides and changelog, bi-directional Git sync (GitHub and GitLab), interactive API explorer, Try-It console, Developer Dashboard with real-time API logs, and a deep layer of AI tooling — including the ReadMe Agent for multi-page editing, Inline AI rewrites, the AI Linter for style-guide enforcement, Docs Audit, GitHub AI Writer for PR-triggered doc updates, Ask AI for end users, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for both ReadMe itself and each customer project so AI tools can search, read, update docs, and call APIs.
ReadMe publishes 14 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Personalized Docs Webhook, Analytics API, API Keys API, and 11 more. Tagged areas include Documentation, Developer Hub, API Reference, Portal, and Analytics.
The ReadMe catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification, 1 JSON-LD context, and 3 Spectral governance rulesets.
ReadMe’s developer surface includes CLI, support, authentication, developer portal, getting-started guide, documentation, API reference, and 61 more developer resources.
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 applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it
carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts
themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already
holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in
front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created.
Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet,
not penalised by it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
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 github.com/api-evangelist/readme: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts.
Submit an artifact on GitHub — free →Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →
ReadMe is an area vendor: providers adopt it to run part of their developer surface. This is the Kin Score checks its features can move for a provider that adopts it, what each one really earns, and what it earns nothing for.
documentationdeveloper portalmeasured17 features checked 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.22.0
ReadMe is the broadest developer-portal lift in this set: Try It!, a changelog with RSS, forums, Getting Started and Authentication landing pages, recipes, and a Discoverability panel (llms.txt, RFC 9727 api-catalog, agent-skills index, content signals) that is on every plan. Most of those are pointer checks, so they count only once the provider declares them in its apis.json. The hosted MCP server is the most capable docs MCP here (its execute-request tool calls the API), but it is one ReadMe template on readme.io or the hub domain, so the rubric grades it platform; and ReadMe renders the OpenAPI it is given, so Contract Quality does not move.
Agent Readiness31.0 of 139 pts
Contract Quality24.0 of 211 pts
Developer Ergonomics26.8 of 42 pts
Discoverability10.0 of 54 pts
Operational Transparency9.0 of 38 pts
Check
Earns
Through
Machine-Readable Contractsaturated Agent Readiness · customers 0.0 pts vs controlSame as contract_present — only when the designer’s OpenAPI is the provider’s first published contract.
Consent & Bot Identity Agent Readiness · customers -0.6 pts vs controlSet the signals and declare them as a ContentSignal pointer; the dimension reads the pointer, not the robots output.
MCP Serverplatform Agent Readiness · customers 0.0 pts vs controlOne ReadMe server template across every project; 0.22.0 grades that platform (0.25 of 12) even though its execute-request tool calls the provider’s API rather than only searching docs.
Agent Skillsdiscounted Agent Readiness · customers -4.0 pts vs controlThe page does not say who writes the advertised skills; absent evidence that they are provider-authored, a platform-published skill set is graded derived.
Publishes a machine-readable contractsaturated Contract Quality · customers +1.3 pts vs controlOnly for a provider with no published contract that builds its reference in the API Designer and exposes the resulting OpenAPI (via the api-catalog or a download link).
Serves a .well-known surface Discoverability · customers +4.0 pts vs controlTurn on API Catalog and serve the hub at the root of a host the harvest probes (docs.); an Enterprise hub under a path prefix is not at a host root.
Getting started guide Developer Ergonomics · customers -14.0 pts vs controlFill in the Getting Started page and declare it as a GettingStarted pointer.
Authentication documentedsaturated Developer Ergonomics · customers -3.5 pts vs control94% of providers with a contract, docs and a reference already earn this; the vendor cannot move it for most of its buyers.
Documentationsaturated Developer Ergonomics · customers -32.6 pts vs control95% of providers with a contract, docs and a reference already earn this; the vendor cannot move it for most of its buyers.
Publishes llms.txt Discoverability · customers +20.6 pts vs controlGenerated from the provider’s own docs on the provider’s domain, so it reads as the provider’s (rule 2’s own-content, own-domain case); a Git-authored custom llms.txt is plainly first-party.
API referencesaturated Developer Ergonomics · customers -33.8 pts vs control94% of providers with a contract, docs and a reference already earn this; the vendor cannot move it for most of its buyers.
Webhooks advertisedconditional Operational Transparency · customers +26.4 pts vs controlOnly if the API already has webhooks; rendering the webhooks object cannot invent one.
122 detected customers vs 5094 comparable providers: composite 48.1 vs 48.0, agent readiness 34.4 vs 32.5. Association, not cause.
Across 8977 providers that publish a contract, adopting ReadMe would move 8977. Median lift: composite +8.6 (90th percentile +13.5), agent readiness +8.1 (+9.4). Conditional rows excluded.
What ReadMe ships that earns nothing (4)
MCP server card and WebMCP tools — The MCP server card is not an api-catalog, security.txt, protected-resource or AAuth document; only the api-catalog row earns this check.
Health check banner — A banner that relays Statuspage.io is not a status page; the provider still needs its own StatusPage.
Postman collection sync — ReadMe consumes collections and offers a fork button; the collection itself must be one the provider publishes.
Hosted developer hub with guides and API reference — Rendering a spec’s examples writes none into the contract; contract-side examples are the provider’s own work.
A model, not a score. Adopting this vendor changes a provider's Kin Score only when the provider publishes the resulting artifacts on its own surface; nothing here writes a score, and no sponsorship or partnership can. The rating is not for sale → · Full vendor facets artifact
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.
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 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.
ReadMe operates a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI tools (Claude, Cursor, IDEs, CI pipelines) search, read, and update ReadMe documentation through natura...
ReadMe's Personalized Docs Webhook is the outbound, customer-hosted webhook the developer hub calls at user sign-in to look up a reader's account data. ReadMe POSTs a JSON body ...
AsyncAPI 2.6 description of ReadMe's Personalized Docs Webhook surface. The Personalized Docs Webhook is the integration that lets ReadMe inject a logged-in end user's account d...
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Kin Score
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