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Istio

Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that provides a comprehensive solution for managing, securing, and monitoring microservices in a distributed system. It acts as a middle layer between services, handling communication, routing, and load balancing, as well as providing visibility into the traffic flowing between services. Istio also offers advanced security features such as access control, authentication, and encryption to ensure that communication between services is secure.

agent ready

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.

Kin Score

API Evangelist profiles Istio the way a machine reads it — 37 machine-readable artifacts across 14 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 — Istio scores 56.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). 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 Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 56.0/100 · developing
Contract Quality 18.4 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 7.4 / 20
Commercial Clarity 5.8 / 20
Operational Transparency 6.8 / 13
Governance 8.8 / 12
Discoverability 8.8 / 10
Agent readiness — 48/100 · agent ready
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

How we profile Istio

Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Istio. 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 14

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.

Istio Telemetry API

The Istio Telemetry API (telemetry.istio.io) provides configuration resources for managing observability within an Istio service mesh. The Telemetry resource enables flexible co...

Istio Mesh Config API

The Istio Mesh Config API (istio.mesh.v1alpha1) provides global configuration for the Istio service mesh control plane and data plane proxy behavior. It includes MeshConfig for ...

Istio Operator API

The Istio Operator API (istio.operator.v1alpha1) defines the IstioOperator custom resource used to install, configure, and upgrade Istio on Kubernetes clusters. It provides a de...

Istio AuthorizationPolicy API

Fine-grained access control policies for workloads

Istio DestinationRule API

Policies applied to traffic after routing (load balancing, connection pool, outlier detection)

Istio Gateway API

Load balancer configuration at the edge of the mesh

Istio PeerAuthentication API

Mutual TLS configuration for peer-to-peer communication

Istio RequestAuthentication API

JWT-based request authentication policies

Istio ServiceEntry API

External service entries added to the mesh service registry

Istio Sidecar API

Sidecar proxy configuration for inbound and outbound traffic

Istio VirtualService API

HTTP/TCP routing rules for traffic management

Istio WasmPlugin API

WebAssembly plugin configuration for Envoy proxy extensions

Istio WorkloadEntry API

Non-Kubernetes workload (VM/bare metal) endpoint properties

Istio WorkloadGroup API

Collection of workload instances sharing common properties

Scroll within the panel for all 14 ·

Open Collections 4

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).

Istio Extensions API

OPEN COLLECTION

Istio Networking API

OPEN COLLECTION

Istio Security API

OPEN COLLECTION

Istio Telemetry API

OPEN COLLECTION

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 six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Istio Plans Pricing

1 plans

PLANS

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.

Istio Rate Limits

1 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 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.

Istio Finops

FINOPS

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.

Istio Context

0 classes · 10 properties

JSON-LD

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.

Istio API Rules

6 rules · 4 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 11

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.

Istio AuthorizationPolicy

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio DestinationRule

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio Gateway

2 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio PeerAuthentication

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio RequestAuthentication

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio ServiceEntry

9 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio Sidecar

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio Telemetry

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio VirtualService

6 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio WasmPlugin

14 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Istio WorkloadEntry

4 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Scroll within the panel for all 11 ·

Security Posture 2

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.

Istio Authentication

http · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Istio Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

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.

Istio Agentic Access

60 operations · 36 acting

60 operations · 36 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Every other property we hold for Istio — 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

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Company 4

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/istio · machine-readable index on apis.io