Cloud Native Buildpacks
Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNBs) transform application source code into OCI-compliant container images that can run on any cloud, without requiring Dockerfiles. Initiated by Pivotal and Heroku in January 2018, CNB joined the CNCF as a Sandbox project in October 2018 and GRADUATED on 11 August 2026, the foundation's highest maturity tier. It is licensed Apache-2.0. CNB is primarily a specification project: three independently versioned contracts — Buildpack API 0.12, Platform API 0.15 and Distribution API 0.3 — plus reference implementations (the pack CLI and the lifecycle). It centralizes container expertise through composable buildpacks, enables layer rebasing for efficient OS updates, and generates Software Bills of Materials in CycloneDX, SPDX and Syft formats. The pack CLI, the kpack Kubernetes operator and the public Buildpack Registry API are the primary integration points.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Cloud Native Buildpacks the way a machine reads it — 26 machine-readable artifacts across 10 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Cloud Native Buildpacks scores 47.4/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 25/100 (agent aware). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance. Every facet and dimension name is a link: it opens that measurement's page on APIs.io, where the rating runs across the whole catalog — the exact checks that feed it, how every profiled provider distributes on it, and who is at the top of it.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-09-10 · rubric v0.20.0
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How we profile Cloud Native Buildpacks
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Cloud Native Buildpacks. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 10
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Buildpack API Specification
The Buildpack API is the contract between a buildpack and the lifecycle. It defines the detect and build executables, layers, build-plan provisions and requirements, and image e...
Platform API Specification
The Platform API is the contract between the CNB lifecycle and a platform such as pack, kpack, or a CI runner. It defines how builders, stacks, run images, and inputs are passed...
Distribution API Specification
The Distribution API specifies how buildpacks and builders are packaged as OCI artifacts, signed, and distributed through OCI registries. It also covers how meta-buildpacks comp...
pack CLI
pack is the reference command-line interface for Cloud Native Buildpacks. It implements the Platform API to build OCI images from source on a developer's workstation, manages bu...
CNB Lifecycle
The CNB Lifecycle is the reference implementation of the Buildpack and Platform APIs. It runs the detect, analyze, restore, build, export, and rebase phases used by all CNB plat...
kpack
kpack is a community Kubernetes-native implementation of Cloud Native Buildpacks. It exposes Image, Builder, ClusterBuilder, and ClusterStack custom resources for declaring cont...
Buildpack Registry
The Cloud Native Buildpacks registry indexes published buildpacks for discovery and reuse. It mirrors metadata for buildpack packages stored in OCI registries and exposes a brow...
Buildpack API
The Buildpack API is the contract between a buildpack and the lifecycle. It defines the detect and build executables, layers, build-plan provisions and requirements, and image e...
Platform API
The Platform API is the contract between the CNB lifecycle and a platform such as pack, kpack, or a CI runner. It defines how builders, stacks, run images, and inputs are passed...
Distribution API
The Distribution API specifies how buildpacks and builders are packaged as OCI artifacts, signed, and distributed through OCI registries. It also covers how meta-buildpacks comp...
Scroll within the panel for all 10 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the things the Kin Score reads for access clarity — renamed from commercial clarity in rubric 0.12, because a free statutory interface has access terms and no commercial ones.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Buildpacks Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Buildpacks Finops
FINOPSFeatures 5
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
pack build
pack builder
pack rebase
pack sbom download
Buildpack Registry
Security Posture 4
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Use Cases 4
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
App Developer Image Building
Platform Operator Integration
Buildpack Authoring
OS-Level Security Patching
Resources
Every other property we hold for Cloud Native Buildpacks — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 5
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 2
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 6
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 5
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 6
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 8
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Commercial 4
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 3
The organization behind the API
Other 5
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/buildpacks · machine-readable index on apis.io
This is an independent, third-party profile of Cloud Native Buildpacks, published by API Evangelist. We do not operate, host, resell, or support these APIs, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated above. Everything here is built from publicly available information — the company's own site, developer portal, documentation, public repositories, and the specifications it publishes for public use. Nothing is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials.
The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated assessments of a company's public API artifacts, scored against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits.
Corrections, re-scores, and removal are free — no partnership or purchase required, and you do not need to justify the request. A removed company is recorded as unrated, never scored zero for having asked. Acknowledgement within one business day; removal within two.
info@apievangelist.com
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you will get a person, not a form — we will tell you exactly which public URLs this profile was built from.