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Making Your APIs AI Ready

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Intermediate content levelIntermediate

Challenges, concepts, and critical shifts

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • Understand the shifts that organizations needs to make to ensure their API ecosystems are ready for AI

Course description

Learn a strategic and actionable framework to prepare for machine-driven APIs. In this concise one-hour session with Mike Amundsen, you’ll explore five critical shifts to understand how to ensure your API ecosystems are machine-ready.

You’ll have the opportunity to take part in discussions about why your current APIs break down for automation or AI use, what would break if an agent used this API, what you’re measuring and missing, and what shifts you should act on first.

This live event is for you because...

  • You’re a software engineer, software architect, or tech lead.
  • You work with APIs.
  • You want to become more knowledgeable about APIs and AI.

Prerequisites

  • An understanding of APIs and related concepts

Recommended follow-up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

The new challenge (10 minutes)

  • Presentation: The shift from human consumers to machine consumers; why existing APIs struggle with AI agents; the five shifts as a response framework
  • Group discussion: Where do your current APIs break down for automation or AI use?
  • Q&A

Intent and context shifts (20 minutes)

  • Presentation: From interfaces to intentions—APIs expose mechanics, not meaning; affordances and semantic labeling; make context machine-readable—metadata as the operational interface; supplying ownership, constraints, and domain meaning
  • Hands-on exercise: Identify one API you know; What is its intent?; What context is missing for a machine consumer?
  • Group discussion: What would break if an agent—not a human—used this API?
  • Q&A

Consistency and discovery shifts (15 minutes)

  • Presentation: Standardize interactions—predictability, error handling, idempotency; enable discovery through signals; self-describing APIs, registries, hypermedia
  • Hands-on exercise: Where is your API inconsistent or hard to find?
  • Group discussion: How do machines “find” and “trust” your APIs today?
  • Q&A

Observe and adapt shift (10 minutes)

  • Presentation: APIs as evolving systems; telemetry, retries, and failure as design feedback; designing for continuous improvement
  • Hands-on exercise: What signals would tell you your API is failing machine consumers?
  • Group discussion: What are you measuring today—and what’s missing?
  • Q&A

Wrap-up and Q&A (5 minutes)

  • Presentation: From interfaces to systems thinking; APIs as part of machine-to-machine ecosystems; the five shifts as an ongoing practice

Your Instructor

  • Mike Amundsen

    An internationally known author and speaker, Mike Amundsen consults with organizations around the world on network architecture, web development, and the intersection of technology and society. He helps companies large and small capitalize on the opportunities provided by APIs, microservices, and digital transformation. Mike has authored numerous books and papers. His book _Design and Build Great Web APIs _(Pragmatic Programmers) is an oft-cited reference. Mike’s other works include the O’Reilly books RESTful Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook, RESTful Web Clients, and Microservice Architecture (coauthor), and he also contributed to O’Reilly’s popular Continuous API Management.

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Skill covered

Application Programming Interface (API)