Scaling API Consistency: Using Spectral at Scale

Stoplight CTO Jason Harmon talks about how to scale API consistency. One of the important facets of API design that sometimes gets overlooked is the design of the API landscape. The larger the landscape, the more it can help when APIs are designed consistently so that Developer Experience (DX) is not only good for individual APIs, but for the entire landscape.
How can this consistency be achieved? One important aspect is the typical combination of "shifting left" and automation: The earlier API designers and developers get feedback about their designs, the less costly it becomes to adjust those designs. And the more of this early feedback can be automated, the less costly it is to provide it.
Spectral is an API linting tool that can help with API consistency. And by using Spectral in a way that is unified across the API landscape, the goal of consistency across the landscape can be more easily reached.
All of this does not mean that API design reviews are not necessary anymore. But ideally, these design reviews should focus on the hard and hard-to-automate questions, and not on checking whether an API does or does not conform to the API guidelines.