canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/ibm.com/main

# IBM API Connect Management API

IBM API Connect is the API management platform used by enterprises to design, secure, publish, and govern internal and partner APIs. The Management API exposes the full lifecycle surface - organisations, drafts of APIs and products, catalogs, gateway services, applications, and consumer subscriptions - so platform teams can drive the catalog from CI pipelines or AI agents instead of clicking through the API Manager UI. It is suited to teams that publish many APIs and need promotion, subscription, and governance steps to be repeatable.

## For AI agents

Manage the full IBM API Connect lifecycle - orgs, drafts, catalogs, products, applications, and subscriptions - from CI or an agent.

## Scope

Does not handle gateway runtime traffic, developer-portal content, or analytics dashboards - use for managing API Connect orgs, drafts, catalogs, and subscriptions only.

## Capabilities

- Manage provider organisations via /orgs and /orgs/{orgId}
- List and update draft APIs and products via /orgs/{orgId}/drafts/apis and /drafts/products
- Manage catalogs and their published products via /orgs/{orgId}/catalogs and /catalogs/{catalogId}/products
- Manage consumer organisations and applications via /catalogs/{catalogId}/consumer-orgs and /apps
- Manage application subscriptions to products via /catalogs/{catalogId}/subscriptions
- Configure gateway services attached to a provider org via /orgs/{orgId}/gateway-services

## Use cases

### API Lifecycle Promotion

Promote a draft API and product from a development catalog through staging into production by calling the catalogs and products endpoints in sequence. The Management API provides /orgs/{orgId}/drafts/apis for the draft state and /catalogs/{catalogId}/products for catalog membership, which together cover the standard four-stage promotion that platform teams run from CI.

Example prompt: List drafts in /orgs/{orgId}/drafts/products, find the order-service product, then publish it to /catalogs/{catalogId}/products for the staging catalog.

### Consumer Onboarding

Create a consumer organisation, register an application, and subscribe that application to a product so a partner can call published APIs through the API Connect gateway. The /catalogs/{catalogId}/consumer-orgs, /catalogs/{catalogId}/apps, and /catalogs/{catalogId}/subscriptions endpoints together cover the partner-onboarding sequence end to end.

Example prompt: Create a consumer org named partner-co, register an application named partner-co-app, and subscribe it to the public-orders product.

### Gateway Configuration Audit

List the gateway services attached to a provider organisation to verify that the right gateways are wired to the right orgs before a release. The /orgs/{orgId}/gateway-services endpoint returns the gateway bindings, which an agent can compare against an expected manifest as part of a pre-release check.

Example prompt: GET /orgs/{orgId}/gateway-services for the production org and flag any gateway whose name does not match the expected list.

### AI Agent Catalog Operator

An AI agent receives a request to publish an API product and drives the API Connect catalog operations directly through Jentic. The agent searches by intent, loads the publish-product schema, and executes the call without holding the raw API Connect bearer token. Typical agent integration is under one hour because the catalog and subscription surfaces are small and well-named.

Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'publish a product to an API Connect catalog', load the /catalogs/{catalogId}/products schema, and publish the order-service product.

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | /orgs | List provider organisations |
| GET | /orgs/{orgId}/drafts/apis | List draft APIs |
| GET | /orgs/{orgId}/drafts/products | List draft products |
| GET | /orgs/{orgId}/catalogs | List catalogs in an org |
| GET | /catalogs/{catalogId}/products | List products in a catalog |
| GET | /catalogs/{catalogId}/consumer-orgs | List consumer organisations |
| GET | /catalogs/{catalogId}/apps | List applications |
| GET | /catalogs/{catalogId}/subscriptions | List subscriptions |

## Key resources

- **Organisations** — Manage provider and consumer organisations
- **Drafts** — Manage draft APIs and products
- **Catalogs** — Manage catalogs and published products
- **Applications** — Manage consumer applications
- **Subscriptions** — Manage application subscriptions to products
- **Gateway Services** — Manage gateway service bindings

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring the IBM API Connect Management API by hand means handling its bearer-token auth against your management server and mapping its org, catalog, and subscription routes yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the IBM API Connect Management API from the API Directory, store the token once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** API Connect puts the org and catalog ids in the URL path (/orgs/{orgId}, /catalogs/{catalogId}), so a rule can pin your agent to reading drafts, products, and subscriptions for one org or catalog. You choose the operations it may call, so anything beyond those reads is not included unless you add it.
- **Credential handling:** Your API Connect token is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'list a catalog's products' or 'see an org's draft APIs', and Jentic returns the matching operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **IBM webMethods Integration API** — webMethods builds the integrations and flows; API Connect publishes and governs them as APIs.
- **Azure API Management API** — Azure API Management is the Microsoft-platform API gateway and manager; API Connect is the IBM equivalent.
- **IBM Business Automation Workflow API** — BAW runs the long-running processes that an API Connect-published API may invoke.

## FAQ

### What authentication does the IBM API Connect Management API use?

The API Connect Management API uses HTTP bearer authentication. Through Jentic, the API Connect bearer token is stored in your Jentic One instance and the agent calls operations using a scoped Jentic credential, never the raw bearer token.

### Can I publish an API product to a catalog with this API?

Yes. POST to /catalogs/{catalogId}/products with the product reference to publish a previously drafted product to that catalog. This is the same operation the API Manager UI runs when an editor clicks Publish.

### How do I subscribe a consumer application to a product?

POST to /catalogs/{catalogId}/subscriptions with the application ID and the product ID. The subscription record is what the gateway uses to authorise calls from that application against the product's plan.

### How do I drive API Connect promotions through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'publish a product to an API Connect catalog', load the /catalogs/{catalogId}/products schema, and execute. Install the SDK with pip install jentic and use the async search, load, execute pattern from a CI step.

### Can I list all consumer organisations on a catalog?

Yes. GET /catalogs/{catalogId}/consumer-orgs returns the consumer organisations registered against that catalog. Combine it with /catalogs/{catalogId}/apps to walk the application tree underneath each consumer org.

### What are the rate limits for the API Connect Management API?

API Connect does not publish a fixed Management API rate limit; throughput depends on the management-server configuration. Treat 429 and 503 responses as backpressure and retry with exponential backoff, especially during bulk catalog operations.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the IBM API Connect Management API?

Yes. Because you run Jentic One self-hosted, your own rules decide which API Connect operations and which stored token the agent may use. Since API Connect carries the org and catalog ids in the URL path (/orgs/{orgId}, /catalogs/{catalogId}), you can pin the agent to read-only calls like GET /catalogs/{catalogId}/products or /catalogs/{catalogId}/subscriptions for a single catalog, so it cannot publish products or create subscriptions unless you grant those operations. Anything beyond the operations you allow is simply not available to the agent.