Tag Archives: tips

08 Dec
2025

Tag Kinds in OpenAPI 3.2

OpenAPI tags have always been annoying: user-supplied arbitrary data for endpoints should be a fabulous feature – but the documentation tools seem to think that tags are only for them so it becomes more difficult to use tags for other purposes. In fact it is very useful to be able to tag endpoints with lots of different categories of data and so in OpenAPI 3.2, tags were enhanced to include an additional “kind” field so that different kinds of tag could be used. Continue reading →
04 Dec
2025

Nested tags in OpenAPI 3.2

OpenAPI has always had support for simple tags, but the OpenAPI 3.2 release brought in some serious tag upgrades including a summary field, a “kind” field with registry, – and the ability to nest tags which is the focus of today’s post. If one level of organisation isn’t enough for your API (and on bigger APIs I’d argue it shouldn’t be) then the ability to indicate which tag is the parent of this tag will be a good feature to adopt when you upgrade your OpenAPI descriptions. Continue reading →
16 Nov
2025

Notification Contexts Matter

Like many of you, my days are dominated by notifications. Emails from project management systems, source control systems, calendar invitations, ticket updates, and message about messages on other platforms. I’ve noticed that some people use notifications as a power tool, while others seem blind to what happens when they do something. So this post is some tips that I’ve picked up along the way. Continue reading →
17 Sep
2025

Quick local API docs with Scalar

Today I’m sharing a quick-and-dirty script to take an OpenAPI description, spin up a docs server locally, and copy the URL into your clipboard. I also use a bit of glob expansion in my script to find the right folder, because I have a lot of APIs with long and formulaic directory names (TM Forum members know this story). I’m spinning up Scalar here as it’s my current favourite just-works local API docs platform. Continue reading →
28 Apr
2025

Just Enough Docs

Too many open source projects suffer from inadequate documentation, and that hurts their adoption, their communities, and puts more burden on maintainers. Many people who create open source software don’t see see themselves as writers, but today I’m sharing tips for documenting open source projects without it needing to take up a huge amount of time to get something published and ready for (docs) contributions. Continue reading →
09 Jan
2025

Save edits to OpenAPI as an Overlay

For teams that generate OpenAPI from their codebase, there’s a tough choice between maintaining rich and extensive content such as Markdown descriptions and examples in codebase annotations, or in making those changes to the generated file – and then losing them when the code changes and the file is regenerated. The new OpenAPI Overlay Specification defines a format for storing updates to an OpenAPI document, and there’s a new generation of tools to make it easy to do, so let’s take a look. Continue reading →
27 Apr
2024

Checking Links in Docs-As-Code Projects

Creating content requires accuracy as well as creativity and the ability to deliver. Working with docs-as-code gives a strong foundation and structure to work within, and means there’s a clear workflow where automation can be added to help us with the easy stuff, such as “do all these links work?”.

I really appreciate having the extra confidence and support of these types of tools, and having implemented them on multiple projects at this point, I thought I’d share my advice for anyone looking to do the same. Continue reading →

25 Mar
2024

Reviewdog filter settings with GitHub Actions

Reviewdog is a tool to use with GitHub actions for applying review tools in your CI. I use it with Vale, and it’s really good. One thing that has tripped me up multiple times is that by default, it only applies the checks to the changes in the pull request, not to the whole project. So when you add something like Vale, which is a prose linter, it only checks … the workflow file you just added! I always forget that it works this way, and how to change it, so I’m pasting some examples for future reference. Continue reading →
28 Nov
2023

Add OpenAI flags to OpenAPI descriptions

With OpenAI’s new Actions feature allowing you to get a GPT that uses your own API, many new doors are open. However giving an AI an access token the keys to your API and telling it to have fun may lead you to realise that one of the doors available leads to the empty lift shaft of overwritten data, or the bottomless well of cloud bill shock. To reduce the risks, OpenAI supports an extension x-openai-isConsequential that you can add to your OpenAPI description, to indicate which endpoints should not be called without a human confirmation step.

I’m not doing much with OpenAI right now, but I do plenty with OpenAPI and the question “how do I add this field to my existing API description?” is one that I can answer! What’s more, you can use the advice in this post to add other extensions or additions to your OpenAPI descriptions using Overlays, this advice isn’t OpenAI-specific, but it’s used in the examples. Continue reading →

20 Nov
2023

When to version bump your OpenAPI description

I’ve heard a variety of bad advice (and some untruths!) regarding how to version your OpenAPI description lately. Rather than dig into those, instead I’ll share my opinion on how I like to version API descriptions in my own projects. Every API project is different, but perhaps there’s something here that can help your project too. Continue reading →