Masterclass at apiDays Paris

Where and when : Dec, 9th – 13H30 until 17h30 – CNIT – Paris la Défense

As AI agents, LLMs, and autonomous orchestration engines become active consumers of APIs, traditional API design patterns often fail to meet machine needs. This course guides API designers, architects, and technical leaders through five key shifts that make APIs discoverable, machine-readable, and AI-ready. Using conceptual anchors from thought leaders Donald Norman, Douglas Engelbart, Roy Fielding, Ted Nelson, and Christopher Alexander, this course moves beyond basic interface design and into systems thinking for autonomous machine consumption. By the end of this course, participants will be able to design API ecosystems that are not only human-friendly, but also directly consumable by intelligent agents and automated systems.

Mike Amundsen

Mike Amundsen is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and
consultant specializing in network architecture, Web development, and
the evolving relationship between technology and society. He works
with organizations around the world to design sustainable API
ecosystems and guide teams through digital transformation.

Amundsen is the author of several influential books, including RESTful
Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook (2022) and Design and Build
Great APIs (2020), and a contributor to Continuous API Management
(2018, 2020). His earlier works, such as RESTful Web Clients (2017)
and Microservice Architecture (2016), remain essential reading for
modern software practitioners.

In recent years, Amundsen’s writing and talks have focused on
AI-augmented API design, composable service platforms, and the future
of human–machine collaboration—continuing his long-standing
exploration of how systems evolve and how meaning emerges in connected
environments.

Lead developers, Solution architects and CTOs

Knowledge

• Understand the conceptual shift from human interfaces to machine affordances
• Explain the role of metadata, context, and discovery in machine consumption
• Recognize the importance of consistency and predictability for autonomous systems
• Comprehend the emerging role of Machine-Centric Protocols (MCPs)

Skills

• Model API affordances using tools like ALPS, TypeSpec, and Smithy
• Embed meaningful metadata into API responses and documentation
• Design standardized interaction patterns across APIs
• Build MCP-compatible wrappers for existing APIs

Competencies

• Design and evolve APIs for machine autonomy and agent orchestration
• Evaluate existing APIs for AI-readiness
• Adapt API design based on telemetry and machine feedback
• Communicate API design rationale to diverse technical audiences

• Understanding of API design best practices
• Experience designing, documenting, or integrating APIs, even if not yet focused on machine consumption.
• Interest in evolving your APIs to support automation, AI agents, or orchestration tools.
• English proficiency (the course is conducted in English)
• Laptop required for hands-on exercises (Wi-Fi provided)

This course contains 9 modules :

1 – The New Challenge — Why APIs Must Evolve for Machine Consumers

Explore the paradigm shift from human-centric API design to systems built for AI agents and autonomous machines. Understand the five key shifts required to make APIs intelligible and usable by non-human consumers.

2 – Shift 1: From Interfaces to Intentions — Designing APIs Around Machine Intent

Learn to move beyond endpoints and verbs toward intent modeling. Redefine API operations in ways that expose purpose and affordance to intelligent agents rather than just human developers.

3 – Shift 2: Make Context Machine-Readable — Adding Metadata and Semantic Clarity

Discover how to enrich APIs with machine-readable context such as ownership, constraints, versioning, and relationships. Learn to embed metadata that supports reasoning, autonomy, and safe machine actions.

4 – Shift 3: Standardize Interactions — Building Predictable and Consistent Behaviors

Understand why consistency in patterns like error handling, retries, pagination, and state transitions is critical for machine usability. Learn to establish universal interaction contracts across an API ecosystem.

5 – Shift 4: Enable Discovery — Using Ecosystem Signals for Machine Navigation

Explore how AI systems find, understand, and compose APIs through discovery mechanisms. Implement hypermedia affordances, registries, and capability catalogs that help agents autonomously locate and interact with APIs.

6 – Shift 5: Observe, Adapt, Iterate — Designing for Continuous Machine Feedback

Learn how to leverage telemetry and usage data from machine clients to evolve APIs. Understand adaptive API design principles that respond to failure patterns, changing agent behavior, and performance signals.

7 – Introduction to Machine-Centric Protocols (MCPs)

Dive into the emerging layer that operationalizes intent and context into actionable function interfaces. Create and configure MCP manifests that define intent names, parameters, and return types to bridge APIs with AI orchestration engines.

8 – Advanced Models and Future Directions — Toward Fully Affordance-Driven APIs

Explore modeling frameworks like ALPS, TypeSpec, and Smithy to describe affordances and machine interactions in depth. Discuss long-term visions for adaptive, agentic ecosystems and the evolution of API standards.

9 – Closing and Next Steps — From Concepts to Implementation

Recap key insights, reinforce the five shifts, and provide a roadmap for applying these practices in your organization. Includes curated references, tools, and next learning opportunities for deeper exploration.

At the end of the course, a quiz will validate the adquired knowledge.

The quiz will take place on apiMasters’ platform, where you will need to create an account.

A perfect score at the quiz will give access to an apiMasters certificate, and a badge that you will be able to share.

 

• Access the apidays Paris conference
• The room for the masterclass will be available soon
• Come with a computer that connects to internet
• That’s it!

• The class will take place in english, with two instructors
• The room will be accessible to people with reduced mobility
• The slides will have maximum contrast
• If you need any accommodation, please send us an email at apimasters@apidays.io