CoreDNS
CoreDNS is a CNCF graduated DNS server written in Go that serves as the default DNS service for Kubernetes clusters. It is flexible and extensible through a plugin architecture, supporting DNS-based service discovery, forwarding, caching, and integration with etcd, Kubernetes, and other backends. CoreDNS can serve as an authoritative DNS server or a recursive resolver, with HTTP plugins exposing health, readiness, and Prometheus metrics endpoints for Kubernetes operations.
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 CoreDNS the way a machine reads it — 17 machine-readable artifacts across 5 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 — CoreDNS scores 45.3/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 39/100 (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.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile CoreDNS
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for CoreDNS. 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 5
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.
CoreDNS DNS Interface
CoreDNS implements the standard DNS protocol (RFC 1035) serving both UDP and TCP queries. In Kubernetes, it resolves service names to cluster IPs, headless services to pod IPs, ...
CoreDNS Plugin API
The CoreDNS plugin framework allows extending DNS server functionality through a chain of plugins defined in the Corefile configuration. External plugins can be written in Go to...
CoreDNS Health API
Health check endpoints used by Kubernetes liveness and readiness probes to assess the operational state of the CoreDNS process.
CoreDNS Metrics API
Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoints exposing DNS query statistics, cache performance, latency histograms, and build information.
CoreDNS Ready API
Readiness check endpoints that indicate whether CoreDNS plugins have finished initializing and are ready to serve DNS queries.
Open Collections 2
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
CoreDNS Health API
OPEN COLLECTIONCoreDNS Metrics API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing 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 six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
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.
Coredns 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.
Coredns Finops
FINOPSSemantic 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.
Coredns Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 3
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.
JSON Schema 1
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
CoreDNS Corefile Configuration
JSON SCHEMASecurity 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.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for CoreDNS — 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 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 2
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 4
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 1
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
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/coredns · machine-readable index on apis.io