Spotlight Rules

Spotlight Rules is an openly-governed build of the Spectral API linter and, more importantly, the first attempt to publish the Spectral ruleset format as a standalone specification with its own portable JSON Schema — so that an organization's API governance rules stop being configuration for one vendor's CLI and become a durable, tool-independent artifact. Started in 2026 as a project of API Evangelist and maintained in the open under API Commons, it ships four public things: the specification and JSON Schema at spec.spotlight-rules.com, the reference implementation (api-commons/spotlight-tools), eight Apache-2.0 npm packages under the @spotlight-rules scope including the `spotlight` CLI, and a 332-rule best-of-breed governance ruleset compiled from public Spectral rulesets. It publishes no hosted API and no commercial tier — the stated position is open source permanently, funded by earmarked sponsorship rather than a paid version.

Spotlight Rules is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include API Governance, API Linting, Spectral, Rulesets, and OpenAPI.

The Spotlight Rules catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Spotlight Rules’ developer surface includes documentation, CLI, engineering blog, support, and 15 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

20.0/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

0 APIs

API Governance API Linting Spectral Rulesets OpenAPI AsyncAPI ArazzoJSON SchemaSpecificationsOpen SourceDeveloper Tools API Design

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 20.0/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 4.8 / 20

Access Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 1.0 / 13

Contract Governance 9.2 / 12

Discoverability 5.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 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

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.

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/spotlight-rules: 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 →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Spotlight Rules Plans Pricing

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Spotlight Rules Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Spotlight Rules API Rules

332 rules · 223 errors 95 warnings 5 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Spectral Ruleset

10 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 1

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

Spotlight Rules Domain Security

TLSv1.3

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 4

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Spectral

Vocabulary

Conformance

Lifecycle

Build 4

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Packages

Packages

CLI

CLI

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

SourceCode

SourceCode

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Roadmap

Roadmap

Support

Support

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

BlogRSS

BlogRSS

Source (apis.yml)

aid: spotlight-rules
name: Spotlight Rules
description: 'Spotlight Rules is an openly-governed build of the Spectral API linter and, more importantly, the first attempt
  to publish the Spectral ruleset format as a standalone specification with its own portable JSON Schema — so that an organization''s
  API governance rules stop being configuration for one vendor''s CLI and become a durable, tool-independent artifact. Started
  in 2026 as a project of API Evangelist and maintained in the open under API Commons, it ships four public things: the specification
  and JSON Schema at spec.spotlight-rules.com, the reference implementation (api-commons/spotlight-tools), eight Apache-2.0
  npm packages under the @spotlight-rules scope including the `spotlight` CLI, and a 332-rule best-of-breed governance ruleset
  compiled from public Spectral rulesets. It publishes no hosted API and no commercial tier — the stated position is open
  source permanently, funded by earmarked sponsorship rather than a paid version.'
image: https://spotlight-rules.com/assets/spotlight-rules-lockup.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/spotlight-rules/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-09-04'
modified: '2026-09-04'
x-type: company
x-source: harvest:under-enriched
tags:
- API Governance
- API Linting
- Spectral
- Rulesets
- OpenAPI
- AsyncAPI
- Arazzo
- JSON Schema
- Specifications
- Open Source
- Developer Tools
- API Design
apis: []
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/spotlight-rules-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://spotlight-rules.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://spec.spotlight-rules.com/spec/
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/spotlight-rules-spectral-ruleset.schema.json
- type: Spectral
  url: rules/spotlight-rules-recommended.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/spotlight-rules-vocabulary.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/spotlight-rules-packages.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/spotlight-rules-cli.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/spotlight-rules-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/spotlight-rules-lifecycle.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/spotlight-rules-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/spotlight-rules-rate-limits.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/spotlight-rules-llms.txt
- type: Roadmap
  url: https://spotlight-rules.com/roadmap/
- type: Blog
  url: https://spotlight-rules.com/blog/
- type: BlogRSS
  url: https://spotlight-rules.com/feed.xml
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/api-commons
- type: SourceCode
  url: https://github.com/api-commons/spotlight-tools
- type: Support
  url: https://github.com/orgs/api-commons/discussions/28
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-09-04'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 12
  pass: local-v3

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