Need Governance Framed as Golden Path
Developers perceive governance as friction and avoid it unless compliance is the easiest path.
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Persona Story:
Riley, the head of APIs, and Pat, the head of platforms, are trying to improve API governance, but developers perceive governance as friction and avoid it unless compliance is the easiest path.
Problem Context
- Developers do not want to “be bothered” with extra governance steps
- Governance is often positioned as checkpoints and approvals, not enablement
- Realistic approach is a middle path: enable iteration in non-prod while governance matures toward prod readiness
Problem Impact
- Governance adoption stalls due to perceived slowdown
- Teams route around governance and create shadow APIs/MCP servers
- Inconsistent implementation patterns across teams and geographies
Naftiko Today
- The
naftiko create capabilityCLI wizard guides developers through compliant capability creation as the easiest path, embedding governance into the default workflow - Backstage integration with capability template scaffolding provides one-click creation of pre-approved capability structures, making compliance the path of least resistance
- Executable YAML specs eliminate the need for Java coding, so the governed path is also the fastest path to a working integration
- JSON Schema validation and Spectral ruleset run automatically, providing helpful feedback rather than blocking gates
Naftiko Tomorrow
- Starter templates (Second Alpha) would provide curated golden-path patterns for common integration scenarios, making the governed approach the obvious choice
- Capability scaffolding from existing APIs (Second Alpha) would let teams adopt the golden path by importing what they already have rather than starting from scratch
- VS Code Agent Plugin with Naftiko Skills preset (Second Alpha) would embed governance-compliant authoring directly in the IDE with guided prompts
- Backstage upgrade (Second Alpha) and TechDocs integration (First Beta) would make the golden path visible and documented within the developer portal teams already use