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
18.4/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Front door AI 2/6 trace saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
0 APIs
API GovernanceAPI LintingSpectralRulesetsOpenAPIAsyncAPIArazzoJSON SchemaSpecificationOpen SourceDeveloper ToolsAPI Design

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
Composite quality — 18.4/100 · emerging
Contract Quality 0.0 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 4.0 / 17
Access Clarity 0.0 / 17
Operational Transparency 0.9 / 11
Contract Governance 7.3 / 10
Discoverability 4.1 / 9
Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15
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
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/.
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
Spectral
 Vocabulary
Vocabulary
 Conformance
Conformance
 Lifecycle
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)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
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.'
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - api-commons/spotlight-tools
  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
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
- Specification
- Open Source
- Developer Tools
- API Design
tags_raw:
- API Governance
- API Linting
- Spectral
- Rulesets
- OpenAPI
- AsyncAPI
- Arazzo
- JSON Schema
- Specifications
- Open Source
- Developer Tools
- API Design
- JSON-Schema
- Open-Source
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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