Couchbasecouchbase.com
Couchbase's external API program is performing strongly across agent discoverability, agent understanding, API design, and operational reliability — partners and their agents can find, parse, and run your APIs with confidence. The one meaningful gap is in partner trust around change management: there is no published changelog, meaning partners and their AI agents have no way to anticipate breaking changes before they cause integration failures.
API DesignA clean, typed, well-governed API contract agents can reason about4 pass1 warn0 fail98A+
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Machine-readable, versioned contractvia spec | 25/25 | The API declares version "v4.0" and uses url-based versioning, so an agent can pin to a stable contract. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%. | A current OpenAPI version with a declared versioning scheme lets agents reason about the contract. |
| pass | Auth declared & discoverablevia spec | 25/25 | Authentication is required across the API (declared globally or on every operation), so an agent knows credentials are needed. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%. | Agents can only call an API when they can determine its auth posture — a declared scheme, or an explicit statement that none is required. |
| warn | Schema coverage & depthvia sdk | 23.2/25 | 13 of 220 public signatures use loose types (anyTypeRatio=0.059). Investigated: sdk 93%, spec 50%. Fix: Replace any/unknown/object/dict/**kwargs in public params and return types with named or primitive types. | Typed, complete request/response schemas are what make agent function-calling possible. |
| pass | Security & governance hygienevia sdk | 15/15 | Code is formatter-clean with zero linter errors and zero style warnings. Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, wellknown 0%. | No leaked secrets, no critical lint violations, no OWASP API Top-10 spec smells, and a published vulnerability-disclosure channel. |
| pass | Example coveragevia spec | 10/10 | 90% of parameters and responses (1769 of 1961) include example values, grounding an agent in real payload shapes. Investigated: spec 100%, sdk 100%. | Examples carry shape semantics schemas under-specify — for humans and agents alike. |
Developer ExperienceThe context both developers and agents need to integrate fast — onboarding, code samples, complete descriptions and worked examples2 pass1 warn1 fail74B
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Self-service developer portalvia docs | 29/29 | Self-service signup available at https://docs.couchbase.com/ai/get-started/intro.html, with a free tier or sandbox documented — an agent can onboard without contacting sales. Investigated: docs 100%. | A first call without a human in the loop — self-serve credentials, a free tier, or an API that needs none. |
| pass | Description completenessvia spec | 15/15 | 94% of operations and parameters carry substantive descriptions (250 of 285 ops, 177 of 177 params), the main semantic cue an agent relies on. Investigated: spec 100%, sdk 71%. | Complete descriptions are the context humans and agents need to use endpoints. |
| warn | Quickstart presentvia docs | 12.5/25 | Quickstart page is reachable at https://docs.couchbase.com/home/index.html (24 variants scanned) but has no runnable code sample in its HTML or .md variant, so there's nothing to copy and run. Investigated: docs 50%. Fix: Add a copy-pasteable curl or SDK call, with the expected response, to the quickstart page (or its .md variant). | A quickstart is the fastest path from landing page to first successful call. |
| fail | Changelog publishedvia spec | 0/13 | No changelog link or mention appears in the spec, so an agent can't tell what changed before something breaks. Investigated: spec 0%, docs 0%. Fix: Publish a structured changelog (e.g., /changelog.json or releases.atom) and reference it in info or externalDocs. | A published changelog lets partners track changes without surprise. |
| na | Code samples in docs | —/18 | No surface produced evidence for this capability in this run. | Multi-language samples shorten time-to-first-call. |
Agent DiscoveryPartners and their agents can find your APIs — llms.txt, registries, crawlable and reachable docs2 pass2 warn0 fail92A+
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Docs reachable, not hard auth-gatedvia docs | 30/30 | All 1 pages are publicly accessible. Investigated: docs 100%. | Agents can only index and fetch docs they can reach — past auth gates and over correct HTTP semantics. |
| pass | Registry & SDK presencevia docs | 28/28 | Indexed on Context7 (websites/couchbase, 69631 snippets). Investigated: docs 100%, sdk 100%, cli 0%. | Listing in MCP registries and publishing SDKs puts the API where agents and their tooling look. |
| warn | llms.txt present, valid & comprehensivevia docs | 23.8/30 | llms.txt covers 0/1 sitemap doc pages (0%); 1 missing — Missing: https://docs.couchbase.com/home/index.html. Investigated: docs 79%, sdk 0%. | A valid, comprehensive llms.txt is the machine-readable entry point for agents. |
| warn | Crawlable / AEOvia wellknown | 9/12 | Sitemap has 51 entries but no lastmod values, so crawlers can't tell what changed recently. Investigated: wellknown 75%. Fix: Add accurate <lastmod> values to sitemap entries — AI-powered search uses them to prioritize crawling. | Bots allowed plus a fresh sitemap make docs findable by agent crawlers. |
Agent UnderstandingAgents can correctly interpret your APIs — machine-readable errors, consistent descriptions, structured data, parseable docs3 pass1 warn0 fail95A+
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Machine-readable errors (RFC 9457)via docs | 28/28 | Documents 12 distinct 4xx/5xx error response codes, so an agent can branch on specific failures instead of guessing. Investigated: docs 100%, sdk 100%, spec 50%. | RFC 9457 problem details and a documented error-code inventory let agents parse failures without burning tokens. |
| pass | Operation purpose clarityvia spec | 25/25 | 99% of operations (281 of 285) have both a clear summary and a descriptive name, so an agent can pick the right endpoint. Investigated: spec 100%, sdk 100%. | Agents select the right endpoint from its summary + operationId; clear, named operations make tool-selection reliable — the strongest driver of correct tool choice. |
| pass | Agent-navigable, token-efficient docsvia docs | 22/22 | All 1 pages contain server-rendered content. Investigated: docs 100%. | Server-rendered, clean, small-footprint docs are what an agent can cheaply fetch and parse correctly. |
| warn | Agent instructions file (AGENTS.md)via sdk | 5/10 | No agents.md or skill.md context file found (nice-to-have for agent operation). Investigated: sdk 50%, wellknown 0%. Fix: Add an agents.md or skill.md describing how an agent should use this SDK (auth setup, key operations, gotchas). | An AGENTS.md gives coding agents explicit setup, auth, and usage instructions to interpret and operate the API — beyond llms.txt's link index. |
| na | Docs structured data | —/8 | No surface produced evidence for this capability in this run. | Structured data (JSON-LD/schema.org) on docs pages gives agents an unambiguous parse target and is what answer engines cite. Detected on the JS-rendered head (Firecrawl) for a bounded page budget, so JS-injected JSON-LD is now caught; pages we can't render are excluded rather than failed. |
| na | Description consistency across surfaces | —/7 | Only 1 surface description(s) with ≥6 tokens available; need at least 2 to compare. | Every surface tells the same story about what the product is. |
Agent UsabilityAgents have the context to use your APIs reliably, not just find them4 pass1 warn0 fail90A+
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Idempotency documentedvia sdk | 27/27 | Built-in retry machinery is present (grep-derived). Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%. | Documented idempotency lets agents retry safely. |
| pass | Pagination documented & consistentvia spec | 22/22 | Pagination parameters are present on the 46 list endpoint(s), so an agent can page through results. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%. | Consistent, documented pagination lets agents traverse collections. |
| pass | Sandbox separationvia sdk | 20/20 | Sandbox environments are exposed (sandbox). Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%. | An isolated environment lets agents exercise destructive operations safely. |
| warn | Rate-limit signalingvia spec | 11/22 | Only 1 rate-limit response header(s) are documented, so an agent has limited signal for backing off before being throttled. Investigated: spec 50%, docs 50%. Fix: Document the full set (e.g., x-ratelimit-limit, x-ratelimit-remaining, x-ratelimit-reset, retry-after). | Machine-readable rate-limit headers let agents throttle adaptively. |
| pass | Runnable collection with test scriptsvia sdk | 9/9 | README is present and includes a runnable quickstart. Investigated: sdk 100%, platform 0%. | A public, maintained collection with assertions is runnable truth agents validate against. |
Resources Discovered
The public resources we found for Couchbase — the evidence behind the score. All discovered from public sources; nothing here requires access to your systems.
| Agent hints | Context7 (69,631) |
|---|---|
| APIs analyzed | 1 — Couchbase Capella Management API |