Design your first API
This walkthrough takes a project version from an empty canvas to a downloadable OpenAPI document. It uses the workspace; on an installation where the workspace is not yet on, the same steps apply on the classic canvases.
You need a project with a draft version. Create one in the main app (Create a project) — published versions are read-only everywhere in the Suite.
1. Open the version
- On the main app, open the Designer dropdown and choose Workspace — or click Open canvas on the Suite home.
- In the top bar, pick the project and version. The left rail shows the version's domain folders; a new version has none, and everything sits in the unassigned bucket.
- Optional: create a domain folder — click the Domain chip, give it a name ("Billing") — so the canvas loads only that part of the catalog.
2. Add a class
- In the left rail, click + ("Add a schema to this version"). Give it a name (
Customer), a kind, a description and a domain. - Select it. The inspector on the right opens its Class panel: name, description, folder, properties and tags.
- Under Properties, add
id,emailandcreatedAt. Each property has a name, description, Required, and a type: a primitive with a format, References another class, or List of these. Bind to a Type picks a registry type instead. - Try Suggest properties — it asks the AI assistant for properties that fit the class, when an Ollama server is configured.
3. Add a path and an operation
- Switch the lens toolbar to Paths (or Combined to keep the classes in view).
- In the left rail, click + New path… and name it
/customers; then + New operation… and chooseGET. - Select the operation. Its inspector has Overview (summary, operation ID, the schemas it Consumes, security), Request (parameters and a request body) and Responses.
- Under Responses, Add response
200and link it toCustomer. In the Combined lens a solid edge now joins the operation to the class — that is the consumption edge.
4. Try it
With the operation selected, click Try it (or Mock & preview in the toolbar). The console shows a request form — server, mock behaviour, scenario, auth, headers, body — and sends through the studio's relay. A draft version gets a synthesized preview; a published version with its hosted mock on answers for real. See Try it and mock.
5. Comment, search, lay out
- Hover a class card header, a property row or an operation lane and click the comment button to
start a thread;
@mentions a tenant member. See Comments. - Press Ctrl / ⌘+K — Jump to anything… — to find a schema or path by name, or run an action such as Find every path that consumes Customer.
- Auto-layout tidies the canvas; the layout is saved per domain, per user.
6. See the code
Click Open as code in the toolbar. The code layer shows openapi.yaml in an editor with live
Problems and Lint rails; edit it, then Apply to write the change back through a review
step that classifies every change. Or open Code and exports from the top bar to pick
another format — AsyncAPI, Arazzo, JSON Schema, GraphQL SDL or SQL DDL — and Download the
OpenAPI document, validated against OpenAPI 3.2 before it leaves.
Next
Cut and publish the version in the main app (Version and publish), then publish your first portal.