How Appear works

Appear passively observes your private network traffic to generate documentation based off your production schema, plus much more.

Appear's introspector snippet can be dropped into your services, in one or many locations. The introspector locally infers your actual schema without sending any actual content, PII, or sensitive data to our servers—only the structure is reported.

Appear's introspector reports on your services schema only, ensuring no sensitive data leaves your network.

Note: Appear's introspector will automatically generate your service endpoint documentation, OpenAPI specs, and sample data when endpoints are fired via interaction with your APIs. If known endpoints are not visible in Appear, you can manually add them by uploading the associated spec.

Benefits of Appear

  • Real-Time API Management: Appear automatically detects and documents APIs as they are used, providing instant visibility and updates. This real-time tracking ensures engineering teams can access the most current API specifications, reducing errors and aligning development efforts.

  • No Code Changes Required: With Appear, teams can integrate comprehensive API monitoring and management tools without modifying existing code or implementing SDKs. This seamless integration saves time and allows developers to focus on their core projects without additional overhead.

  • Enhanced Collaboration and Efficiency: Appear fosters better communication and collaboration within and across teams by providing a centralised, dynamic view of API interactions. Its capabilities to set alerts and export API specs streamline workflows and improve the overall efficiency of development processes.

Appear safely observes your traffic

Appear's open-source introspector is entirely auditable and available for review here.

Your sensitive data is kept safe

Appear's open-source introspector only sends back the structure of the API schema to the Appear app. This means that Appear never receives personally identifiable information (PII data).


If you have any queries or require support with the above instructions, please get in touch with us.

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