# Service Mesh

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/service-mesh/  
**APIs profiled:** 5

Service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication in microservices architectures. It provides traffic management, mutual TLS security, observability, policy enforcement, and resilience features without requiring changes to application code. Key implementations include Istio, Linkerd, Consul Connect, and AWS App Mesh. This index tracks service mesh specifications, implementations, and related APIs across the ecosystem.

## Kin Score — 27.0 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-10-23 under rubric 0.25.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 27.0).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 62.5 |
| Contract Quality | 34.7 |
| Contract Governance | 13.6 |
| Operational Transparency | 33.7 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 9.5 |
| Access Clarity | 28.4 |

Regulatory layer — **Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform)**: 4.9 (matched via fallback).

## Agent readiness — 15.5 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| 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 |
| Delegated Identity | no |
| Protected Resource Metadata | no |
| Dynamic Client Registration | no |
| Agentic Commerce | no |
| Pagination Ratio | na |
| Operation Distinctiveness | na |

## APIs (5)

- **Istio API** — Istio is the most widely deployed service mesh. Istio's control plane exposes APIs for traffic management (VirtualService, DestinationRule, Gateway), security (PeerAuthenticatio...
- **Linkerd Admin API** — Linkerd is a lightweight CNCF-graduated service mesh focused on simplicity and security. Linkerd exposes an admin API for metrics, health checks, and edge proxy management. It u...
- **Consul Connect / Service Mesh API** — HashiCorp Consul provides service discovery and a service mesh (Consul Connect) with mutual TLS, intentions-based access control, and multi-datacenter support. Consul exposes a ...
- **AWS App Mesh API** — AWS App Mesh is a managed service mesh that provides application-level networking for microservices on AWS. It integrates with ECS, EKS, EC2, and Fargate. The App Mesh API manag...
- **Service Mesh Interface (SMI)** — SMI is a standard interface for service meshes on Kubernetes. It defines common APIs for traffic policy, traffic telemetry, and traffic management so that applications work with...

## Plans (1)

- **Service Mesh Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Service Mesh, Microservices, Cloud-Native, Kubernetes, Networking, Observability, Zero Trust

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