--- title: Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There description: A census of 1,005 public GitHub repositories running Spectral in CI/CD pipelines reveals that 63% use only the default ruleset with no custom rules — meaning... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There | daily.dev og:description: A census of 1,005 public GitHub repositories running Spectral in CI/CD pipelines reveals that 63% use only the default ruleset with no custom rules — meaning... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zu733Zfh1.png og:image:alt: Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There **[API Evangelist](https://daily.dev/sources/apievangelist)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A census of 1,005 public GitHub repositories running Spectral in CI/CD pipelines reveals that 63% use only the default ruleset with no custom rules — meaning most teams are running a linter's factory settings and calling it governance. The data shows widespread issues: tooling pinned to floating versions, linting running post-merge instead of on PRs, 13% using continue-on-error so failures never block builds, and only 2 out of 1,000 pipelines scoring 6/8 on a maturity rubric. The author argues that default rulesets cause harm by flooding mature APIs with noise, manufacturing governance skeptics. The rare bright spots — like Italian public-sector repos pulling from a centrally-maintained national API guidelines project — show what real governance looks like: shared, versioned, owned rulesets wired as PR gates. A companion HTML report tool (reporter.apicommons.org) is introduced to make Spectral JSON output human-readable. The core argument: even the mechanical, automatable quarter of governance is thin almost everywhere, which means the harder people-and-process work has mostly not happened either. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A Reference Pipeline for API Governance in CI/CD](https://daily.dev/posts/a-reference-pipeline-for-api-governance-in-ci-cd-nioptq9ki) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Open API Governance Toolchain](https://daily.dev/posts/the-open-api-governance-toolchain-sk3zf1qjy) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From a Prose Style Guide to a Grounded Spectral Ruleset](https://daily.dev/posts/from-a-prose-style-guide-to-a-grounded-spectral-ruleset-snxkckaxo) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Spectral Rules: Machine-Readable Enforcement](https://daily.dev/posts/spectral-rules-machine-readable-enforcement-jkb1uojuv) · API Evangelist · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [There Is No Platform for API Governance](https://daily.dev/posts/there-is-no-platform-for-api-governance-aulwndynr) · API Evangelist · 3 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#openapi](https://daily.dev/tags/openapi) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1"},"datePublished":"2026-07-08T12:51:33.482Z","dateModified":"2026-07-08T12:52:00.979Z","description":"A census of 1,005 public GitHub repositories running Spectral in CI/CD pipelines reveals that 63% use only the default ruleset with no custom rules — meaning...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/79c51f35e52f7b6cf715e6681b777380?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/79c51f35e52f7b6cf715e6681b777380?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"API Evangelist","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"API Evangelist","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/a36244ae67bc4f41a605f780267ecb5f","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/apievangelist"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/most-teams-just-turned-spectral-on-and-stopped-there-zu733zfh1","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"cicd,openapi","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"API Evangelist","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/apievangelist"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Most Teams Just Turned Spectral On and Stopped There"}]} ```