FAQs

Is there any performance loss with Appear?

Yes, there is a minimal performance impact due to the processing of request and response bodies, which is inherent in any system analysing real traffic. However, this effect is typically negligible and unlikely to be a concern for most users. Appear uses rate sampling to minimise the amount of data sent from your network, ensuring that performance remains optimised. If necessary, further optimisations, such as processing on a separate thread, can be implemented in the future.

How does Appear handle sensitive data?

Appear is designed to prioritise your data security. Our introspector does identify sensitive data, including PII (Personally Identifiable Information), but it never transfers this data off your system. Instead, we only process and send structural information to our servers. You can audit the introspector code anytime to verify this practice, ensuring a lower barrier to entry and quicker problem-solving.

How do I manage environments in Appear?

Appear automatically detects the environments set from your CI/CD pipeline variables. This makes it easy for you to ensure services from development to production are available to you within Appear.

How does Appear capture endpoints that aren't being hit?

Appear won't detect endpoints not being used by systems and users. You will need to upload the associated OpenAPI spec in order for these services to be available in Appear.

Does Appear handle API versions?

Yes, Appear can capture the version of your APIs and present these within the Catalog explorer. We have a method of catering for this, but it's best to discuss with us how you're using versioning to ensure we're capturing them in the right way.

How does Appear generate the API Reference and Catalog?

Our open-source introspector, once installed and integrated into your system, provides detailed reports on the schema of active endpoints. These reports are processed by an LLM middleware processor, allowing us to fine-tune which AI models and

Can I test Appear locally?

You can install and integrate the introspector package and run your dev environment locally. Once the server is up and running, you can mimic user behaviour to fire the endpoints and see your dev environment in Appear populate with services.