Design Studio

Design Studio is Apiway’s design-time intelligence engine. It helps you build better APIs by combining your business context with technical standards — so your APIs are well-designed, compliant, and versioned correctly from day one.

Two Ways to Design

1. Business Context First

Start from what your business needs, not from a blank YAML file.

1. Describe your business function — Select the organisational function (e.g., KYC, Payments, Logistics) and the capability you need an API for.

2. Apiway generates the OAS — The design engine composes an OpenAPI specification from matched standards, industry patterns, and your organisation’s conventions.

3. Review and refine — The generated spec includes proper naming, pagination, error schemas, security, and versioning. Adjust as needed.

4. Deploy — Feed the spec into Quick Deploy and go live.

2. Upload and Improve

Already have an OAS? Upload it and let Apiway improve it.

1. Upload your spec — Drag in your existing .yaml or .json file.

2. Get recommendations — The recommendations service analyses your spec against your organisation’s standards and suggests improvements.

3. Accept recommendations — One click applies the improvements and corrects the version number.

4. Deploy — The improved spec goes through governance and deployment.

Intelligent Recommendations

The recommendations service analyses your API across multiple dimensions:

Category	What It Checks
Endpoints	Naming conventions, RESTful patterns, missing CRUD operations
Parameters	Standard query parameters, pagination, filtering patterns
Headers	Required headers, caching directives, content negotiation
Schemas	Error response format, data types, naming consistency
Security	Authentication schemes, scope definitions, HTTPS enforcement
Response codes	Appropriate status codes, missing error responses
Documentation	Summaries, descriptions, examples — also impacts AI tool quality via MCP

Version Intelligence

When you upload a new version of an existing API, Design Studio compares it against the currently deployed version:

• Breaking change detected — Bumps to the next major version (e.g., v1 → v2)
• New features added — Bumps minor version (e.g., v1.2 → v1.3)
• Fixes only — Bumps patch version (e.g., v1.2.3 → v1.2.4)

The version is set automatically in the returned spec. No manual info.version editing.

Gap Analysis

Design Studio can analyse your entire API landscape against your business capabilities:

• What’s missing — “Your KYC function has no API for shareholder screening”
• What’s orphaned — APIs with no business function mapping, candidates for retirement
• What’s duplicated — Multiple APIs covering the same capability

This shifts the conversation from “is this API well-designed?” to “is your API landscape complete?”

Using Design Studio

Platform API

# Upload and improve an existing spec
curl -X POST https://design.api.apiway.net/v1/design \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "specification": "<base64-encoded OAS>",
    "apiId": "payments-v1"
  }'

Response includes the improved spec, recommendation count, whether the version was bumped, and the new version number.

Management UI

Navigate to Design Studio in the management portal. Upload your spec or start from a business function. Review recommendations and accept with one click.

CLI

# Design from business context
apiway design --function payments --capability refunds

# Improve an existing spec
apiway design ./openapi.yaml --api payments-v1