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What's the hardest OpenAPI spec you've ever worked with?

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Hi Product Hunt,

While building an OpenAPI SDK generator, I realized that real-world API specifications are often much messier than the examples we see in documentation. I'm curious—what's the biggest challenge you've encountered with OpenAPI? Circular references? Inconsistent naming? Missing schemas? I'd love to hear your experiences.

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In my experience, the biggest challenge isn't complex schemas it's when the documentation and the actual API behavior slowly drift apart over time.

 

Completely agree. In your experience, what usually causes that drift? Manual updates, undocumented backend changes, or versioning issues? I'm curious because it's a challenge many API teams seem to face.

I think SDK generators are becoming just as important as the specs themselves. As APIs grow more complex, the quality of generated code can have a huge impact on the developer experience.

 

Thanks, Yahya! I completely agree. High-quality SDKs can make the difference between an API that's enjoyable to integrate with and one that's frustrating. Out of curiosity, what's the biggest thing you look for in a generated SDK—readability, type safety, project structure, or something else?