API Evangelist Kin Lane argues that API governance tooling must extend beyond the IDE and CI pipeline to reach AI agents that draft OpenAPI documents, Arazzo workflows, and MCP servers without human involvement. His solution is an open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — API Governance MCP — that exposes a 733-rule Spectral-powered ruleset as a tool call any agent client (Claude, Cursor, etc.) can invoke. The server lints OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, Arazzo, and MCP server definitions inline, returning findings, severity, JSONPath locations, and remediation prompts. It also ships a `request_review` tool that escalates ambiguous findings to a human reviewer rather than pretending automation covers everything. The core argument is that governance should be a native capability of the agent, not a separate step requiring human discipline to invoke.
