Service Directory API

Name: Service Directory API API
Brand: Service Directory API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecCloud InfrastructureNetworkingoauth214 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Register services and endpoints in a central registry, then resolve them by name for clients running across GCP and hybrid environments.

Quickstart

Get started with Service Directory API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"resolve a service from google service directory"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Service Directory API API.

Create, list, and delete namespaces that group services within a region

Add, list, and remove endpoints (address, port, annotations) for each service

Resolve a service to retrieve all of its current endpoints in one call

GET STARTED

Start building with Service Directory API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use for: Register a new microservice with its endpoints in Service Directory, Resolve all healthy endpoints for the 'orders' service, List every service registered in the production namespace, Add a new endpoint with a specific port to an existing service

Not supported: Does not handle health checking, traffic routing, or DNS resolution itself — use for service registration, endpoint metadata, and resolve lookups only.

Service Directory is Google Cloud's managed service registry for discovering, publishing, and connecting services across GCP, on-prem, and other clouds. The API organises services into namespaces, registers individual services with metadata, and tracks endpoints with addresses, ports, and annotations. A resolve operation returns all healthy endpoints for a service so clients can do client-side load balancing or DNS lookup.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Service Directory API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Hybrid Service Registry

Use Service Directory as a single registry across GCP, on-prem, and other clouds. Services running in any environment register themselves with their network address and port, and clients resolve by service name regardless of where the workload lives. Pairs with Cloud DNS to expose entries through DNS and with VPC private connectivity for hybrid endpoints.

Call POST /v1/{+parent}/services/{serviceId}/endpoints with address, port, and annotations to register a new instance, then call services:resolve to confirm it appears.

Microservice Discovery for Internal Apps

Internal apps and serverless workloads call services:resolve at startup to discover the addresses of dependent services. Service Directory tracks endpoint metadata so clients can pick by region, version, or any custom annotation, and updates propagate quickly when endpoints register or de-register.

Call POST /v1/{+name}:resolve on the service to retrieve every endpoint, then pick one matching annotation 'version=v2'.

Decommissioning Audit

Run periodic audits that list every service in every namespace, identify ones with no recent registrations or no healthy endpoints, and flag them for cleanup. The API supports filter expressions on labels, regions, and last-update timestamps to make this kind of housekeeping straightforward.

List namespaces, then for each namespace call services.list with filter='annotations.tier="critical"' and assert at least one endpoint is registered.

AI Agent Topology Mapper

An AI agent that reasons about a deployment's topology pulls services and endpoints from Service Directory to build a live dependency map. Through Jentic the agent searches by intent and never holds the GCP service account credentials directly, so the same agent can run across multiple GCP organizations safely.

List every namespace, list every service in each namespace, list every endpoint per service, and emit a graph of service-to-endpoint relationships.

Key Endpoints

14 endpoints — service directory is google cloud's managed service registry for discovering, publishing, and connecting services across gcp, on-prem, and other clouds.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/v1/{+parent}/namespaces

List namespaces in a project and region

POST

/v1/{+parent}/services

GET

/v1/{+parent}/endpoints

List endpoints for a service

POST

/v1/{+parent}/endpoints

POST

/v1/{+name}:resolve

Resolve a service to its endpoints

DELETE

/v1/{+name}

Delete a namespace, service, or endpoint

GET

/v1/{+parent}/namespaces

List namespaces in a project and region

POST

/v1/{+parent}/services

GET

/v1/{+parent}/endpoints

List endpoints for a service

POST

/v1/{+parent}/endpoints

POST

/v1/{+name}:resolve

Resolve a service to its endpoints

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

GCP service account credentials and OAuth tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic MAXsystem vault. Agents receive a short-lived scoped access token at execution and never see the underlying service account keys, even when the same agent works across multiple GCP organizations.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g. 'resolve a service to its endpoints') and Jentic returns the matching services:resolve operation with its full input schema, so the agent does not have to navigate Service Directory's resource hierarchy by hand.

Time to first call

Direct integration: 1-2 days to set up namespaces, IAM bindings, and a resolver client with caching. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Google Cloud DNS API

Exposes Service Directory namespaces as private DNS zones for clients that resolve by hostname.

Use Cloud DNS for hostname-based discovery. Use Service Directory for richer endpoint metadata and direct API resolve.

Complementary

Google Compute Engine API

Hosts most of the workloads that register endpoints in Service Directory.

Use Compute Engine to manage instances. Use Service Directory to advertise their network endpoints.

Alternative

HashiCorp Nomad API

Nomad's built-in service registry plus Consul integration for non-GCP environments.

Use HashiCorp tooling for multi-cloud and on-prem-only deployments. Use Service Directory when GCP is the management plane.

Complementary

Google Cloud IAM API

Controls who can read or write each namespace, service, or endpoint in Service Directory.

Use IAM to manage principals and roles. Use Service Directory to manage the registry entries themselves.

FAQs

Specific to using Service Directory API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Service Directory API use?

Service Directory uses OAuth 2.0 with the cloud-platform scope and IAM permissions like roles/servicedirectory.editor on the namespace, service, or endpoint. Through Jentic the credentials are stored encrypted in MAXsystem and a scoped token is provided at execution.

Can I use Service Directory for on-prem services?

Yes. Endpoints record arbitrary address and port values, so you can register on-prem or third-cloud services and resolve them from clients running in GCP or via Cloud DNS forwarding zones.

What are the rate limits for the Service Directory API?

Google enforces a default per-project quota of 600 read requests per minute and 60 write requests per minute on the registry resources. Resolve calls have higher per-region limits because they sit on the discovery hot path.

How do I resolve a service through Jentic?

Run the Jentic search query 'resolve service directory endpoints', load POST /v1/{+name}:resolve, and execute it with the service resource name. Jentic injects the GCP credentials so the agent only needs the service name and an optional max-endpoints filter.

Does Service Directory health-check endpoints?

No. Service Directory stores the endpoints you register; health checking is the responsibility of the registering workload or a fronting load balancer. Clients should still validate health on their side after resolving.

Can I expose Service Directory entries through DNS?

Yes. Cloud DNS supports a Service Directory zone type that mirrors a namespace as a private DNS zone. Updates to endpoints propagate to the DNS view automatically without separate record management.