Bump.sh 2024 Wrapped
The year where tech writers and engineers united
As for each year, we've learned a lot in 2024.
Last year, we were talking about our belief that "teams need to make their large and growing catalog of internal and partner APIs discoverable".
Not far off, we realized one key challenge our customers were facing was even more pressing. Partner APIs, often serving our customers to help their own users better adopt their core products, are too often poorly documented. Why? Because they're somewhere between the responsibility of engineers (who build the API structure for optimal technical and functional delivery) and tech writers (who author the API description for optimal users onboarding and adoption).
API definitions, through OpenAPI and AsyncAPI specifications, are the keystone. They're the contract that binds humans and machines and clearly and explicitly describes how APIs are built and how they should be consumed.
Yet, even in a world where Git is built to facilitate collaboration and versioning, how can those two roles have the proper ownership?
That's been our playground for the whole year, and let me tell you, it will also be in 2025.
2024 deliveries, beyond product updates
Overlays support
At first, we announced it only as a "Love Cycle" update, meaning a slight improvement in the user experience. Since then, we've seen it as something much bigger than we thought: the Overlay Specification support. Born as a separate OAI specification, Bump.sh made it compatible with both OpenAPI and AsyncAPI through our CLI.
Why should you care? Because possibilities are endless. As a contract, a definition file should not change every other day if the API structure is untouched. Yet, its reader-facing description needs to live. Whether because some specific users will need further information to adopt your API because you're releasing a new SDK or because you need to manage the lifecycle of given endpoints.
API management guides and tutorials
One more thing we're proud of: our free API guides and tutorials website. We're evangelists of API specifications, and it made sense for us to help our users make the best out of it. Spotlight on:
- Technical writing guides.
- The OpenAPI Complete Guide.
- The OpenAPI Cheat Sheet and the AsyncAPI Cheat Sheet (especially proud of those ones).
The best of that content is that it's all fully Open Source (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed).
API Explorer
Say hello to the API Explorer—your new best friend for making APIs simple and accessible. It’s built right into your docs, so you can fill forms with complete OpenAPI support, send requests and test things out, and share example requests hassle-free. Add in mock server integration (Microcks.io FTW) and secure, client-side handling, and you’ve got everything you need to help users jump into your API with ease.
More cool new features
- Revamping our dashboard experience. When your API catalog increases, find your way easily through them, whether to adjust their settings or read their docs.
- Making your public APIs more discoverable (and improve your SEO) through improved sitemaps and APIs.json support
- Multiple SSO connections support. Why just one when there can be so many? Plug multiple user directories, and forget the hassle of maintaining access rights from our UI.
- The new
x-feedbackLinkvendor extension that lets you add links for your users to give feedback on your API docs. Most recently seen at Elastic's API docs.
There have also been countless "small" improvements to our product, thanks to our customers' feedback (lots of love for Elastic.co, BigID, Lightspeed Commerce, Radar Healthcare, Zattoo and so many more.)
Open Source
We started sponsoring Open Source Projects in 2022, including OpenAPI, OpenAPI Generator, AsyncAPI and FastAPI. So far, our cumulated financial contributions amount to over 20.000€. We have to be humble; it's not changing the face of the Open Source world. Yet, we're proud top show that even a small start-up like us can do it, and we're thankful to each of those project's maintainers for their amazing work.
Last year has also been the occasion for us to do one more step towards Open Sourcing some of our code. Welcome cors-toujours, a lightweight HTTP proxy server allowing requests to be forwarded to a specified target URL. We needed that to let our API Explorer users experience properly sending requests to our customers APIs from documentation hosted on Bump.sh. It just made sense for use to open this code to the wider community, as it can help in a lot of other use cases than ours.
Team, team, team
2024 also got us to meet new teammates. We're looking forward to everything we'll achieve together. Welcome again Aurel, Manu and Laura!
Note that while we fully embrace remote work, we also value those moment where we can meet face to face. Peer work. Have a meal and/or a drink. Play games, take a walk. Or share some love at a conference.
Last year, we had our ritual quarterly "IRLs" (some call that offsite, other call it seminars, we call it after our geek background). And we attended 3 amazing conferences, that were the place for mind-blowing discussions with our community. Thank you FranceAPI, apidays London and apidays Paris!
Bonus
As each year, let us share with you our best use of Google Meet filters or any sort of costume or accessory that was at our hands during our weekly calls.
