--- title: The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance description: Part three of a nine-part series breaking down the Kin Score, a composite rating for APIs run by apis.io, focusing on the Contract Governance facet (12% of the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance | daily.dev og:description: Part three of a nine-part series breaking down the Kin Score, a composite rating for APIs run by apis.io, focusing on the Contract Governance facet (12% of the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/rsPejUJoU.png og:image:alt: The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance 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. # The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance **[API Evangelist](https://daily.dev/sources/apievangelist)** · 6 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Part three of a nine-part series breaking down the Kin Score, a composite rating for APIs run by apis.io, focusing on the Contract Governance facet (12% of the score, 33 points across six checks). The facet checks whether a provider publishes a Spectral ruleset, uses balanced severities, publishes a naming vocabulary, declares a conformance profile (FHIR, FAPI, PCI, ISO 20022, CAMARA), and publishes an OpenAPI Overlay. It explicitly does not run the ruleset against specs - it only reads what is declared. Version 0.12 dropped two lint-outcome checks that falsely implied execution, renamed the facet, and fixed scoring so artifacts generated by the apis.io pipeline itself (rather than first-party by the provider) only earn partial ( ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What does the Contract Governance facet of the Kin Score measure for an API provider? It measures whether an API provider has written down design rules and whether anything enforces them, worth 33 points (12% of the composite). The six checks are: publishing a Spectral ruleset (10 points), a substantial ruleset of 20+ rules (5 points), balanced severities using warn and info, not only error (3 points), publishing a naming vocabulary (5 points), a declared conformance profile like FHIR or FAPI (6 points), and publishing an OpenAPI Overlay (4 points). _Teams building API style guides can track how scoring rubrics like this evolve by following coverage on daily.dev._ ### Why did the Kin Score drop from 48 points to 33 points for the Contract Governance facet? Version 0.12 removed two checks that read declared severities while implying they reflected actual lint outcomes, since Spectral was never actually executed against a provider's spec. The highest-scoring ruleset under the old system was one that could never fail a build, so those checks were cut, taking the facet total from 48 points down to 33. _Developers evaluating API quality rubrics can follow how scoring methodologies get corrected over time on daily.dev._ ### How does the Kin Score handle provenance when a ruleset or conformance artifact was generated by the scoring pipeline rather than the provider? Artifacts generated by the apis.io pipeline itself are credited as derived, at a quarter of full credit, while only a first-party declaration earns full credit. Half of conformance artifacts in the catalog, 1,881 of 3,784, are pipeline-generated readings rather than provider claims, and the 0.23 release further reduced unmarked artifact credit from full to 0.90. _Anyone weighing automated versus self-declared compliance data can track these scoring nuances on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Quality](https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-quality-rpcg8n7gy) · API Evangelist · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Discoverability](https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-discoverability-u3iqbmapb) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Six Facets Behind the API Evangelist Composite Score](https://daily.dev/posts/the-six-facets-behind-the-api-evangelist-composite-score-mfqkfcumu) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Every Talk At APIDays London, Mapped To The Kin Score](https://daily.dev/posts/every-talk-at-apidays-london-mapped-to-the-kin-score-whyhpicqp) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [APIs.io Provides Discovery-Grade Artifacts](https://daily.dev/posts/apis-io-provides-discovery-grade-artifacts-qi9dr8bju) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#openapi](https://daily.dev/tags/openapi) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou) ```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":"The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou"},"datePublished":"2026-10-01T12:43:07.624Z","dateModified":"2026-10-01T12:43:31.206Z","description":"Part three of a nine-part series breaking down the Kin Score, a composite rating for APIs run by apis.io, focusing on the Contract Governance facet (12% of the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1250bd2da068ceadcff13ba427de5c03?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1250bd2da068ceadcff13ba427de5c03?_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/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"architecture,openapi","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@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":"The Kin Score, Facet By Facet: Contract Governance"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-kin-score-facet-by-facet-contract-governance-rspejujou#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What does the Contract Governance facet of the Kin Score measure for an API provider?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It measures whether an API provider has written down design rules and whether anything enforces them, worth 33 points (12% of the composite). 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