# Versioning

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/versioning/  
**Website:** https://apievangelist.com  
**APIs profiled:** 0

An index and topic collection covering API versioning patterns, schema evolution, and breaking-change detection across the API lifecycle. API versioning communicates change to consumers, while schema versioning and diff tooling makes those changes explicit, reviewable, and reversible. This collection brings together versioning approaches like SemVer and CalVer, registry-driven schema evolution platforms (Apollo, Buf, Apicurio, Confluent Schema Registry), spec-diff tools (oasdiff, Optic, Bump.sh, GraphQL Inspector), API documentation versioning (Stoplight, Scalar, Bump.sh), versioning headers and sunsetting practices (Stripe API Versioning, Sunset Header), and dependency-versioning automation (Dependabot, Renovate, Conventional Commits).

## Kin Score — 9.6 / 100 (minimal)

Scored 2026-10-23 under rubric 0.25.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 9.6).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 48.2 |
| Contract Quality | 14.7 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 5.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 9.5 |
| Access Clarity | 0.0 |

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

## Agent readiness — 0.0 (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 | no |
| 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 |

## Use cases (8)

- **Pre-Merge Breaking Change Gate** — Run oasdiff or Optic in CI on every pull request that touches the OpenAPI spec and block the merge if breaking changes are introduced without an explicit major version bump.
- **Date-Pinned API Versions** — Issue per-account or per-request API versions (e.g. Stripe's 2024-04-10 versioning) so customer integrations remain stable while the platform iterates rapidly behind the scenes.
- **Schema Registry Compatibility Enforcement** — Producers and consumers of Kafka, gRPC, or GraphQL schemas register every revision in Apicurio, Confluent, Buf, or Apollo and the registry refuses incompatible changes at publis...
- **Multi-Version API Documentation** — Publish v1, v2, and v3 documentation simultaneously through Bump.sh, Stoplight, or Scalar so consumers on older versions still have authoritative reference material.
- **Deprecation and Sunset Notification** — Emit Deprecation and Sunset HTTP headers from deprecated endpoints, then track consumer migration through analytics before fully removing the version.
- **Automated SemVer Release** — Use Conventional Commits plus tools like semantic-release to compute the next SemVer version, generate a changelog, tag the repo, and publish a release entirely from commit hist...
- **Continuous Dependency Upgrades** — Configure Dependabot or Renovate to open weekly PRs for dependency upgrades, with SemVer-aware grouping and automatic merge for non-breaking patches.
- **API Changelog and Release Notes** — Publish a structured changelog through LaunchNotes, Beamer, or Keep a Changelog conventions so consumers can review what changed in every API release.

## Tags

API Versioning, SemVer, CalVer, Schema Evolution, Breaking Change, Deprecation, Schema Registry, Spec Diff, Conventional Commits, Sunset Header

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