A New Year, an Open Source Tool

A New Year, an Open Source Tool, and a Small Problem That Kept Bugging Me

There’s something about the start of a new year that makes you want to clean things up.

Not just desks and calendars, but ideas that have been sitting in your head for a while.

For me, one of those ideas was API documentation.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about APIs, how systems communicate, and why documentation matters more than we usually admit. All of that wasn’t theory. It came from a very real problem I kept running into.

We technically had API documentation. But it didn’t feel shareable.

It worked for engineers. It didn’t work for conversations.

And that gap kept showing up at the worst moments.

The small frustration that wouldn’t go away

Every time someone outside the backend team asked, “Can you share the API docs?”

I paused.

Not because the docs didn’t exist. But because I knew what they would see.

Swagger links. Postman collections. Accurate, but intimidating.

I didn’t want to explain how to read the documentation before they could even understand the API.

That pause was the signal.

I didn’t want to replace tools. I wanted to connect them.

This wasn’t about building yet another documentation generator.

Swagger already does a great job. Postman is powerful. OpenAPI exists for a reason.

The problem wasn’t missing data. The problem was missing context and presentation.

So I started building something very small for myself.

A simple web app that:

1. Connects to Swagger / OpenAPI URLs
2. Optionally reads Postman collections
3. Keeps documentation live and in sync

Presents APIs in a more human, browsable way

1. No uploads every time something changes.
2. No PDFs going stale.
3. No guessing which version is correct.

Just one place to point people to.

Why open source it?

At some point, it became obvious this wasn’t just my problem.

If you’re building APIs that are meant to be reused, shared, or trusted, you eventually hit the same wall:
“Technically documented” is not the same as “understandable”.

So instead of keeping this as an internal utility, I decided to open source it. Just a tool that grew out of a real need.

The project

It’s early.
It’s evolving.
And it’s intentionally simple.

If you’re curious, here’s the repository:
api-baucha

You’ll find:

The idea, structure room to improve it together

Why this feels like the right way to start the year

Open-sourcing this feels like closing a loop.

From:
“What is an API?”
To:
“How systems communicate”
To:
“Why documentation breaks”
To:
“Let’s try something different”

It’s not about perfection. It’s about clarity.

And if this tool saves even a few people from hesitating before sharing their API docs, it’s already done its job.

I’ll keep writing as this evolves. And I’ll keep it honest.

That feels like a good way to begin the year.

Happy New Year.