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Technical Specifications
Technical specifications are detailed technical requirements, standards, and parameters that define the characteristics and performance criteria of a product, system, or service. In the API and software domain, technical specifications include formal API description formats (OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema), data exchange formats (JSON, XML, CSV, Protobuf), communication protocols (HTTP, gRPC, WebSocket, GraphQL), and encoding standards. Organizations adopt technical specifications to address interoperability, consistency, and governance challenges in their technology environments. Key specifications in the API economy include the OpenAPI Specification, AsyncAPI Specification, JSON Schema, RAML, API Blueprint, and GraphQL SDL.
Resources
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OpenAPI Specification
The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) is a vendor-neutral, language-agnostic interface to HTTP APIs that allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a service. An OpenAPI document describes or is used to gener…
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AsyncAPI Specification
AsyncAPI is an open source initiative that seeks to improve the current state of event-driven architectures (EDA). The AsyncAPI Specification is used to describe and document message-driven APIs in a machine-readable format. It supports pr…
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JSON Schema
JSON Schema is a vocabulary that allows you to annotate and validate JSON documents. It is used to define the structure, constraints, and semantics of JSON data, and underpins both OpenAPI and AsyncAPI for data model definitions. The curre…
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GraphQL Specification
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what th…
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gRPC
gRPC is a modern open source high performance Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework that can run in any environment. It uses Protocol Buffers as the interface description language and supports bidirectional streaming and flow control. Orig…
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RAML Specification
RAML (RESTful API Modeling Language) is a YAML-based language for describing RESTful APIs. RAML enables you to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It provides a human-readable format that describes RESTful API models and…
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Providers working in Technical Specifications
Providers whose own tags share at least two of this topic's tags, most shared first.
| Provider | About | Rating | APIs |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSMA | The GSMA (GSM Association) is the London-headquartered global trade body for the mobile industry, representing roughly 750 mobile network operators and around 400 companies in the wider mobile ecosystem, and the organiser of MWC Barcelona.… | strong | 18 |
| AsyncAPI | AsyncAPI is a Linux Foundation project that improves the state of event-driven architectures by providing an open specification and tooling ecosystem for defining asynchronous and event-driven APIs. It enables developers to document, valid… | developing | 1 |
| IEEE Xplore | IEEE Xplore is the authoritative technical library operated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), providing access to over 6 million documents spanning engineering, computer science, electronics, and technology.… | developing | 1 |
| LAPIS | LAPIS (Lightweight API Specification for Intelligent Systems) is a compact, LLM-native API description format authored by Daniel Garcia (cr0hn). It is designed as the format you convert your OpenAPI specifications to when the consumer is a… | thin | 1 |
| Alliance for OpenUSD | The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) is a Linux Foundation project dedicated to promoting interoperability of 3D content through Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). Founded by Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA, AOUSD standardizes 3D… | thin | 2 |
| APIs.json | APIs.json is an open, machine-readable specification that API providers can use to describe their API operations, similar to how websites use sitemap.xml. The format provides a lightweight means for individuals and organizations to documen… | thin | 1 |
| Swagger | Swagger is an open-source framework by SmartBear for designing, building, documenting, and consuming RESTful APIs using the OpenAPI Specification. Originally created by Wordnik in 2011, Swagger became the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) in 201… | thin | 5 |
| openEHR | openEHR is the open specification family for electronic health records, and the main structural alternative to HL7 FHIR. It is governed by two UK not-for-profit entities: the openEHR Foundation, a company limited by guarantee that holds th… | thin | 13 |
| Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) | Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) is a proposed open standard for the discovery layer that sits in front of every agentic protocol — the step before invocation, where a client asks "what is available for this task?" and gets back a ranked s… | emerging | 1 |
| Service Mesh Interface (SMI) | Service Mesh Interface (SMI) was a CNCF Sandbox specification that defined a standard, vendor-neutral set of Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) for the most common service mesh capabilities: traffic policy, traffic telemetry, an… | emerging | 4 |
| Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) | The Open Geospatial Consortium is the standards body for geospatial interoperability — a member-funded consortium founded in 1994 and headquartered in the United States, with 362 member organizations plus 159 individual members across gove… | emerging | 24 |
| API Style Guides | A landscape index of public API style guides published by leading technology companies and standards bodies. API style guides codify conventions for resource modeling, URI design, HTTP method use, status codes, error formats, pagination, v… | emerging | 11 |
| RSS | RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the canonical XML feed format family for publishing and subscribing to streams of frequently updated content — blogs, news, podcasts, and other periodic resources. The RSS family in this index covers RSS… | emerging | 6 |
| OpenAPI | OpenAPI (formerly Swagger Specification) is a standard, language-agnostic specification for describing RESTful APIs in a machine-readable format. It enables automated documentation generation, client code generation, and API testing, servi… | emerging | 1 |
| ASTM International | ASTM International is one of the world's largest voluntary standards development organizations, founded in 1898. ASTM publishes more than 13,000 globally recognized consensus standards across 150+ technical committees and 2,100+ subcommitt… | emerging | 2 |
| Avoice | Avoice is an AI-native workspace for architects and engineers that automates the non-design work of running an architectural practice. Its AI agents understand drawings, specifications, schedules, materials, building codes, and research to… | emerging | 0 |
| OpenAPI Initiative | The OpenAPI Initiative is a Linux Foundation project that promotes the OpenAPI Specification for defining standard, language-agnostic interfaces to RESTful APIs. It provides governance, tooling ecosystem support, and community collaboratio… | emerging | 1 |
| Certivity | Certivity is a Munich-based RegTech company, founded in 2021, that operates an AI-native regulatory intelligence platform for regulated industries such as automotive, aerospace, and connected vehicles. Its product, Certivity Core, turns co… | emerging | 0 |
| OSGi | OSGi is a set of specifications that define a dynamic component system for Java. It enables modular, service-oriented Java applications by managing the life cycle, dependencies, and services of bundles at runtime. OSGi is a Java/JVM techno… | minimal | 0 |
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md is a standardized file convention used in open source repositories to credit third-party software, libraries, inspirations, and other works that a project builds upon or is indebted to. It is a common practice for docume… | 0 |
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DocumentationEngineeringRequirementsSpecificationStandards