We are pleased to welcome Jentic to the OpenAPI family! Jentic joined the OpenAPI Initiative in early 2025, and is building the bridge between the AI World and the API World, providing agents with targeted, repeatable, and efficient workflows. Jentic agents are built on OpenAPI and Arazzo, making these specifications crucial building blocks in the Jentic platform.
We talked with Erik Wilde, Head of Enterprise Strategy for Jentic and, of course, OAI Ambassador and lead for the OAI Track!
Thank you Erik for taking the time to talk to us!
Please tell us a bit about your organization and your needs as an API provider in publishing well-described APIs.
Jentic is using APIs in two ways: The first is by building on existing APIs and providing a layer of workflows on top of these APIs which can be used by agents. This allows agents to use targeted, repeatable, and efficient workflows. The second way of using APIs is by exposing the workflows themselves as APIs, so that they can be used throughout the entire organization like any other API.
What is the most important factor in your decision to become an OpenAPI Initiative member?
Jentic uses OAI’s open standards as the very core of our platform. Like so many other organizations, we need those standards to be robust, and we need a healthy ecosystem to be in place to maintain and evolve these standards. For Jentic, supporting OAI means to support the very foundation that our business is built on, and it also means to support the growing ecosystem of API users out there who need OAI to be successful with their API and AI initiatives.
How would you like to see the OpenAPI Specification evolve in the future?
For now, OpenAPI itself is established and very stable, and while we look forward to OpenAPI 3.2 and beyond, OpenAPI itself is a great foundation as it is. Our focus is a bit more on Arazzo, but I guess that’s covered in the next question…
Do you use Arazzo, and if so how important is Arazzo’s development in expanding how APIs are described?
For us, Arazzo is less expanding how APIs are described, but more expanding the space which is covered by open standards. We see it as an extremely relevant and powerful addition to the API space. Ideally, we would like to see Arazzo extending beyond orchestrating OpenAPI APIs. We know that AsyncAPI is in the pipeline, and it would be interesting to look beyond that and explore how Arazzo can pull in as many APIs as possible, regardless of how they are described.
Do you use Overlay, and if so how important is creating standardized automation languages for OpenAPI descriptions?
So far, Jentic is not using Overlay, but we are looking at it and are excited by its possibilities. One area that we are looking at is applying overlays to Arazzo: Since we describe our workflows in Arazzo, it could be interesting to support different views of these workflows, in the same way as Overlay supports different views of an OpenAPI-described API.
If you could have one feature included in future versions of the OpenAPI Specification what would it be and why?
Since APIs will be increasingly consumed by AI, directly or indirectly, it would be great to see OpenAPI supporting the needs of this class of consumers a little bit better. This does not necessarily mean that any new functionality is needed, it may just be that the richness of the descriptions could be improved for AI consumers. Currently, nobody exactly knows what this could look like, but it would be great to see this class of consumers being considered in updates to the specification.
What role do the OpenAPI Initiative specifications play in the evolution of APIs and AI?
OAI and OpenAPI play essential roles in the evolution of APIs and AI. The entire API is bigger than just OAI’s specifications, but their market share is big enough that any progress or lack thereof has a notable impact of how the API space evolves. When it comes to AI and specifically AI agents, APIs play an absolutely critical role: AI Agents must be able to gather input and perform actions, and without APIs, this is impossible. Many of the APIs that AI agents are using will be described in OpenAPI, which makes it obvious how critical the role of OAI’s specifications is.
Any final thoughts that provide insights on how you use OpenAPI that you feel is of interest to the community?
We firmly believe in the power of standards. They provide a shared model and terminology, and they create a rich ecosystem of practices and tooling. Using open specifications as your source of truth, and focusing on the quality of the descriptions that you create, will become more important than ever. The API space, which has been around for a little longer, and the newer AI space will grow closer and closer, and using standards as the connective fabric is the winning strategy in the increasingly complex digital world that we are living in.
Joining the OpenAPI Initiative
Want to become a member of the OpenAPI Initiative? Find more information here.
While you think about it, please checkout these resources:
- How to contribute guide.
- Our Specifications homepage, with the latest versions of OpenAPI, Arazzo, and Overlay.
- OpenAPI Initiative on GitHub, where we develop our specifications.
About the OpenAPI Initiative
The OpenAPI Initiative was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor-neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software.
The OpenAPI Initiative has grown to a multi-specification that, first and foremost, provides the OpenAPI Specification, the most popular API description language available to API providers and consumers. The OpenAPI Initiative also supports the development of the Arazzo Specification, which caters for complex workflows invoking many APIs, and the Overlay Specification which provides the means to deterministically and reliably update an OpenAPI description through automation.
To learn what OpenAPI can do for you please visit our What is OpenAPI page.
About Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at the Linux Foundation homepage.
Contributors: Erik Wilde, Chris Wood