Cloud Native Buildpacks
Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNB) is a CNCF-graduated specification and set of tooling for transforming application source code into OCI images that can run on any cloud. The project unifies the Heroku and Cloud Foundry buildpack ecosystems around an open standard for detection, build, and image export. The reference implementation lifecycle, the pack CLI for local builds, the kpack server-side builder, and a registry of distribution buildpacks together form the CNB ecosystem. CNB is built around a documented Buildpack API, Platform API, and Distribution API, all versioned and published in the github.com/buildpacks specifications.
More than an index entry, but the surface is still mostly links rather than artifacts — the cohort most likely to move a full band from modest, well-targeted work.
API Evangelist profiles Cloud Native Buildpacks the way a machine reads it — 10 machine-readable artifacts across 7 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 19.6/100 (emerging), with a separate agent-readiness read of 0/100 (human only). 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.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
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 7
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
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...
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...
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Spectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Cloud Native Buildpacks API Rules
SPECTRALSecurity Posture 1
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.
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.
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Design & Contract 2
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 3
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Company 2
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/cloud-native-buildpacks · machine-readable index on apis.io