API Documentation: OpenAPI and Arazzo From APIs.json

API Documentation: OpenAPI and Arazzo From APIs.json

An APIs.json describes a collection of APIs — and since version 0.19 it can carry the artifacts themselves inline: full OpenAPI definitions, Arazzo workflows, prompts, and rules living right inside the index. So we built API Documentation, a standalone tool that turns any APIs.json into rich, readable HTML. Nothing leaves the browser, and there is no backend.

Try it → documentation.apicommons.org

What It Renders

Point it at an APIs.json and you get the whole picture. Every API in the index shows up with its link properties — documentation, signup, pricing, authentication — as cards. Any inline OpenAPI is rendered as a full API reference: servers, authentication, tag-grouped operations, parameters, request bodies, and response schemas. Any inline Arazzo becomes a step-by-step workflow timeline with inputs, payloads, success criteria, and outputs. On top of that it surfaces the common properties, workflows, prompts, rules, includes, overlays, network, and maintainers — and it reads every specification version, 0.11 through 0.21, with advisory notes when a document reaches for fields newer than the version it declares.

Three Ways to Use It

The tool is built to be portable, because documentation you cannot move is documentation you do not really own.

Mode How Result
Hosted Drop a file, or add ?url= to point at any APIs.json on the web Instant docs in the browser
Zip Rename the built viewer index.html, sit it next to your apis.json Self-contained folder; the viewer finds its sibling
Single file npm run bundle -- apis.json my-apis.html One HTML file that works from disk, a gist, or email

Two examples ship with the site: a local food business bundle — an APIs.json 0.21 bundle with 8 APIs carrying inline OpenAPI and per-API and cross-provider Arazzo workflows — and a classic 0.14 index with URL-only properties, the way APIs.json looked when apis.io launched.

Your Index, Your Source of Truth

There is no import step and no platform to adopt. The APIs.json is the source of truth; this tool just reads it and makes it legible to a human. That is the whole design.

API Documentation is one of the API Commons tools, open and Apache-2.0 like the rest of them, and this is another entry in our series introducing the tools one at a time.

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