The operational platform
The platform around the system: workflows, management, registry, metadata, observability.
Workflows & Jobs
Coordinating multi-step processes — orchestration versus choreography and when each fits — and where non-request work lives on Kubernetes: Jobs, CronJobs, and KEDA-scaled queue workers.
API Management
API management as four cooperating planes rather than one gateway product — runtime, contract, discovery, and signal — and versioning and evolution as a managed lifecycle, not an afterthought.
API Registry
One authoritative, versioned home for every contract — OpenAPI, .proto, AsyncAPI, and event schemas — with Apicurio's compatibility rules gating breaking changes in CI before code ships.
API Metadata
The discovery and trust plane — a searchable catalog of every API, topic, and table with ownership, automated lineage, and quality signals, so you can answer 'if I change this field, who breaks?' before you change it.
Observability
Traces, metrics, and logs from OpenTelemetry, correlated by one trace id across the LGTM stack — auto-instrumentation, W3C context propagation, and head- vs. tail-based sampling.