New API Insights Report: Harnessing API Intelligence

We recently worked with apidays and Treblle to research and draft the Harnessing API Intelligence Report. This comprehensive, strategy and tactic-focused guide looks at best practices in API observability and API governance, in order to support API providers to prepare for the AI era.

Download the report from:

• apidays
• Treblle

Methodology

Keen to launch a signature report at apidays New York, Treblle and apidays worked together to develop the project.

We were brought on board as the writer and designer team to assist with the publication.

The Treblle team (Vedran, Harsha, David and Davor) had a specific proposition: they were seeing an industry need to move beyond the concept of API observability and use the learnings from monitoring API performance and security to drive consistent, standardised design of APIs leveraging API governance best practices. But they recognised that API governance, in some eyes, has become a technical and  standardisation concern in organisations. They wanted to move beyond this focus to an idea of API Intelligence that looks at the value that APIs provide to both the provider and consumer, and that can help guide future decisions on AI implementations.

They had also conducted a ton of research already. Their Anatomy of an API Report produced every December is a rich summary of current API design practices. The report draws on their API governance model which is also used to create the apiinsights.io tool which can score an API based on key factors that Treblle believes are essential for well-designed, performant and secure APIs.

We used this framework to guide our report. We saw our report as the third prong in Treblle's model:

• Treblle's API Insights Tool scores key API characteristics to identify where they can be used.
• This framework is also used to organise data on current industry practices in Treblle's Anatomy of an API Report. This report points out areas where there is low industry-wide adoption of best practices and where there are improvements being made ion how APIs are designed.
• Our report then looked at what API teams can do to improve those areas where industry are lagging in adopting best practices, using the API Insights framework and the key areas identified in the Anatomy of an API 2024 Report.

Design

Our designer Rebecca Vittorazo looked at ways to present the information in a consistent style, aligning with some of Treblle's color scheme, while also including banners and styles that reflected apidays as the publisher. apidays are releasing a series of reports this year, under the banner API Insights, so we wanted to ensure a consistent look for this publication series while also having each report have its own distinctive style. Some of apidays styling was incorporated into a cover banner while allowing the report to also stand on its own.

As part of our projects, we always create a style guide which we then share with our client in case they want to use again in future.

We also look for creative and engaging ways to present the calls for action in our report. In this case, the report has a ton of practical tips for improving API governance. We know that teams responsible for API governance can spread from individual API developers and teams that are passionate about encouraging their organisation to move towards more universal approaches, to platform and enablement teams that must work with a range of priorities, and centralised teams that might have more time and resources to focus on larger projects. 

We brainstormed some ideas and came up with the 10 minutes/10 days/10 weeks approach:

• What can someone do in a spare 10 minutes? 
• What could a team do across a two week sprint? 
• And if resources and time are available, what could be done in a 3 month/10 week project? 

This also lent itself to an easy cheat sheet/one page resource as a summary for readers that can be used by Treblle as a standalone resource or for download in the future if they want. It also makes a great social media image.

Technical review

We were lucky enough to enlist the support of API author and industry leader Mike Amundsen to review the work prior to publication and to provide feedback on our technical suggestions and some quotes for the report.

Publication and promotion

The report was launched at the sold-out apidays event in New York in May 2025. apidays continues to promote it on social media and via their newsletters, which has thousands of subscribers. Treblle have set up their own landing page as well for their community, and are promoting regularly. I joined a webinar with API governance expert and author of Automating API Delivery, Ikenna Nwaiwu and Treblle CEO Vedran Cindrić. Vedran is an excellent webinar host, making both Ikenna and I immediately comfortable, and his down to earth, pragmatic style encouraged our conversation and honest feedback on where the industry is at and where it needs to go.

If you have a report idea and would like to work with us and apidays, please get in touch or book using the Calendly below.

We also recommend checking out Treblle's apisinghts.io tool and their broader offerings. We were impressed with what they offer, which made working with them an easy decision for us, as at Platformable we stand by the partnerships and clients we work with in order to ensure we can be trusted in future with our tech analysis and recommendations.

You can download the report directly from apidays and Treblle.