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Tooling

These are the open-source tools we have come across as part of this market research, either offered by the companies we are profiling or referenced and used as part of what they offer, keeping a record of what we find, and then incorporating the most interesting tools into Naftiko.

1 - Activiti

This is a really useful OpenAPI governance tool using Spectral rules. It was created by the Italian government for anyone to fork and run 100% on GitHub. It is a React app you can download and use locally, then build and publish to GitHub pages. I is really useful for demos and is easy to customize with different JSON or YAML, going beyond just OpenAPI, and assemble different rulesets for different governance purposes. The editor will do YAML or JSON linting with intellisense in the Monaco editor–driven by a single JSON Schema file. It is a really slick editor, and useful to have around.

React application that you can build and run on GitHub pages which acts as JSON / YAML linter with Spectral rules.

GitHub: https://github.com/italia/api-oas-checker

2 - CloudEvents

Standard Webhooks is a set of open source tools and guidelines to send webhooks easily, securely and reliably. Webhooks are becoming increasingly popular, though every webhooks provider implements them differently and with varying quality. This makes it hard for providers who need to reinvent the wheel every time and repeat the same costly mistakes, and annoying for consumers who need to have a different implementation for each provider. It’s also holding back the ecosystem as a whole, as these incompatibilities mean that no tools are being built to help senders send, consumers consume, and for everyone to innovate on top.

Specification for describing and implementing Webhooks.

Website: https://www.standardwebhooks.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/standard-webhooks/standard-webhooks

3 - Event Destinations

Event Destinations are endpoints where event producers, such as API Platforms and SaaS, deliver events. Examples of destination types include AWS SQS, GCP Pub/Sub, Hookdeck Event Gateway, RabbitMQ, Amazon EventBridge, Kafka, Webhooks, and more.

Destinations where events can be delivered.

Website: https://eventdestinations.org/ GitHub: https://github.com/hookdeck/event-destinations

4 - HARific

Driven by frustration with diagnosing customer problems from browser experiences, HARific was built to solve a real problem – being unable to see what the customer saw, in the way they saw it. Diagnosing performance problems or rendering issues without proper tools is really hard. HARific provides visual exploration of gigantic HAR files in the terminal, with plans for a replay server that will replay every response back to the browser, complete with breakpoints to pause the conversation anywhere.

Diagnosis problems the way customers see it.

GitHub: https://github.com/pb33f/harific

5 - Standard Webhooks

CloudEvents is a specification for describing event data in common formats to provide interoperability across services, platforms and systems. CloudEvents has received a large amount of industry interest, ranging from major cloud providers to popular SaaS companies.

Specification for describing event data.

Website: https://www.standardwebhooks.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/cloudevents/spec

6 - Spring AI

The Spring AI project aims to streamline the development of applications that incorporate artificial intelligence functionality without unnecessary complexity.

Providing MCP server using Java

The project draws inspiration from notable Python projects, such as LangChain and LlamaIndex, but Spring AI is not a direct port of those projects. The project was founded with the belief that the next wave of Generative AI applications will not be only for Python developers but will be ubiquitous across many programming languages.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Artificial Intelligence, MCP Servers

Website: https://docs.spring.io/spring-ai/reference/index.html

7 - DBeaver

DBeaver Community is a free, open-source database management tool for personal projects. Manage and explore SQL databases like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Apache Family, and more.

Open source database management tool for personal projects.

DBeaver is a free, open-source universal database management tool and SQL client that supports a wide variety of databases. It provides a unified interface for working with numerous database systems including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, SQLite, MongoDB, and many others - essentially any database that has a JDBC driver. DBeaver offers features like an intelligent SQL editor with syntax highlighting and auto-completion, visual query builders, ER diagrams for database schema visualization, data export/import capabilities, and database administration tools. It’s built on Eclipse and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. DBeaver comes in two editions: a Community Edition that’s completely free and open source under the Apache License, and a commercial Enterprise Edition that includes additional features like NoSQL database support, cloud database connectivity, and advanced security features. It’s particularly popular among developers and database administrators who work with multiple database platforms and need a single, consistent tool for all their database management needs.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Database, MySQL, MaridaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Apache

Properties: SQL editor, data editor, schema editor, AI integration, ER diagrams, data export/import/migration, SQL execution plans, database administration tools, database dashboards, spatial data viewer, proxy and SSH tunneling, custom database drivers editor GitHub, data/schema compare, data transfer, visual query builder DBeaver, syntax highlighting, auto-completion, error detection, result grid, data filtering and sorting, direct grid editing Chat2DB, database connection session monitoring, tools for data and schema migration GitHub, smart AI completion and code generation with OpenAI or Copilot GitHub, plugin support Chat2DB, automatically generated ER diagrams, diagram export to GIF/PNG/BMP/GraphML formats, customization of columns visibility G2, support for 100+ database drivers, JDBC and ODBC driver support GitHub

Website: https://dbeaver.io/

GitHub: https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver/stargazers

8 - Activiti

Activiti is the leading lightweight, java-centric open-source BPMN engine supporting real-world process automation needs. Activiti Cloud is now the new generation of business automation platform offering a set of cloud native building blocks designed to run on distributed infrastructures.

A Java business automation platform.

Activiti is a lightweight, Java-centric open-source Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) engine designed for real-world process automation. It enables organizations to model, execute, and manage business processes in a highly flexible and developer-friendly way. The modern evolution of the platform—Activiti Cloud—extends this foundation into a fully cloud-native business automation platform built from modular microservices. Its architecture is composed of distinct, scalable building blocks including the Runtime Bundle for immutable and distributed process and decision runtimes, an Audit Service and Query Service that are both storage-independent and extensible, Cloud Connectors for streamlined system-to-system integration, an Application Service that provides a distributed aggregation layer, and a Notification Service supporting secure WebSocket and GraphQL-based subscriptions. Together, these components make Activiti Cloud an adaptable and enterprise-ready automation framework optimized for distributed, containerized, and event-driven environments.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Gateway, Kubernetes

Properties: lightweight, java-centric, open-source, BPMN engine, process automation, workflow management, cloud-native, microservices, modular architecture, scalability, transparency, resilience, distributed infrastructure, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, runtime bundle, audit service, query service, cloud connectors, application service, notification service, separation of concerns, containerization, extensibility, composability, immutability, elasticity, developer-friendly, DevOps-ready, independent services, interoperability, open standards, Apache license, performance, integration, observability, flexibility, zero-downtime deployments, abstraction layers, event-driven, community-driven, maintainability, configuration, modernization

Website: https://www.activiti.org/ GitHub: https://github.com/Activiti

9 - OpenSearch

OpenSearch is an open source, enterprise-grade search and observability suite that brings order to unstructured data at scale.

Searching unstructured data to provide observability.

OpenSearch is an open-source search and analytics suite designed for real-time data exploration, log analysis, and full-text search at scale. Originally derived from Elasticsearch and Kibana, it provides a community-driven alternative for indexing, querying, visualizing, and managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data. OpenSearch includes a powerful distributed search engine, a dashboarding interface (OpenSearch Dashboards), and a rich ecosystem of plugins for observability, security, alerting, and machine learning. It is commonly used for application monitoring, security information and event management (SIEM), and data analytics in cloud and enterprise environments, offering flexible APIs and compatibility with standard Elasticsearch clients and tooling.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Gateway, Kubernetes

Properties: Distributed search, analytics engine, full-text search, real-time indexing, OpenSearch Dashboards visualization, RESTful API access, SQL and PPL query support, alerting and anomaly detection, observability and log analytics, security and access control, index lifecycle management, scalability and high availability, machine learning integration, extensible plugin architecture, compatibility with Elasticsearch APIs, cross-cluster replication, snapshot and restore, data ingestion pipelines, custom analyzers and tokenizers, relevance tuning, open-source governance, community support

Website: https://opensearch.org/ GitHub: https://github.com/opensearch-project

10 - Bruno

Bruno is the open-source client used as part of the Naftiko platform, leveraging Bruno’s GitOps approach to make APIs available.

Open-source, GitOps, Local API Client

Bruno is an open-source, Git-friendly API client designed for developing, testing, and organizing API requests in a local, file-based environment. Unlike traditional tools like Postman or Insomnia that rely on cloud storage or proprietary formats, Bruno stores collections as plain-text files in a human-readable “.bru” format, making them easy to version, share, and collaborate on using Git. It supports REST, GraphQL, and other request types, along with features such as scripting, environment variables, and testing through lightweight JavaScript assertions. Built to be fast, offline-first, and privacy-respecting, Bruno provides a streamlined and developer-centric experience for managing APIs directly within existing source control workflows.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Client, Testing

Properties: Collections, Requests, Responses, Scripts, Tests

Website: https://www.usebruno.com/

11 - agentgateway

Agentgateway is an open source project that is built on AI-native protocols to connect, secure, and observe agent-to-agent and agent-to-tool communication across any agent framework and environment.

Kubernetes-native API gateway and ingress controller.

Agentgateway connects AI agents, MCP tool servers, and LLM providers in any environment. These two-way connections are secure, scalable, and stateful. You get enterprise-grade security, observability, resiliency, reliability, and multi-tenancy features. This way, agentgateway addresses common gaps with traditional gateway proxies or protocols like MCP and A2A. With agentgateway, you can quickly adopt and scale your agentic AI environments.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Gateway, Kubernetes

Properties: LLM Consumption, Manage API Keys, Control Spend, Observe Traffic, Inference Routing, MCP Connectivity, MCP Authentication, MCP Authorization, MCP Observability, Agent Connectivity, Configuration, Configure Listeners, Configure Backends, Configure Traffic Management, Configure Resiliency, Configure Security, CEL-based RBAC, Routing, Observability, Tool Federation, Unified Connectivity, Developer Portal

Website: https://agentgateway.dev/ GitHub: https://github.com/agentgateway

12 - Apache Ignite

Apache Ignite is a distributed in-memory computing platform that lets you keep data and compute close together for low-latency workloads-.

Distributed in-memory computing platform.

Apache Ignite is a distributed in-memory computing platform that lets you keep data and compute close together for low-latency workloads: it provides an in-memory data grid (key-value and ANSI SQL), a compute grid for colocated processing, and optional durable persistence so datasets can outgrow RAM while still serving from memory. It supports ACID transactions, indexing, continuous queries and streaming, and can act as a high-performance cache in front of existing databases or as a standalone storage/compute layer for OLTP and HTAP use cases. Ignite offers clients for Java, .NET, and C++ (plus thin clients and JDBC/ODBC), integrates with popular tooling, and scales horizontally with partitioned/replicated data, failover, and rebalancing.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: In-Memory, Distributed, Low-Latency

Properties: In-memory data grid, key-value cache, ANSI SQL querying, distributed joins and indexes, ACID transactions, colocated compute grid, MapReduce-style tasks, continuous queries, data streaming/ingest, optional durable persistence (disk tier), partitioned and replicated caches, affinity-based data colocation, failover and rebalancing, service grid (distributed services), messaging and events, JDBC/ODBC and thin clients, Java/.NET/C++ APIs, cluster discovery and autoscaling hooks, zero-deployment node classloading, metrics and management (JMX/REST).

Website: https://ignite.apache.org/

13 - Backstage

Backstage is a portal distribution destination, publishing 3rd-party APIs for use across the platform.

Delivering internal developer portals.

Backstage is an open-source platform (created at Spotify and now a CNCF project) for building internal developer portals that centralize a company’s software ecosystem—services, data pipelines, websites, libraries, infrastructure, and more—into a single, searchable catalog. It provides opinionated building blocks like the Software Catalog, Software Templates (scaffolder) for “golden paths,” TechDocs for docs-as-code, and a rich plugin system so teams can surface CI/CD status, deployments, cost, ownership, and runbooks in one place. The goal is to tame sprawl, standardize workflows, and give developers a self-service hub that speeds delivery while improving reliability and governance.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Portals, Catalogs

Properties: Domains, Systems, Components, APIs, Resources, Groups, Locations, Templates

Website: https://backstage.io/

14 - Calcite

Apache Calcite provides a dynamic data management framework Naftiko is using to work across data sources.

SQL parsing, validation, across data sources.

Apache Calcite is a dynamic data management framework that provides a SQL parser/validator, a rich relational algebra, and a cost-based query optimizer that can plan across many heterogeneous data sources. It doesn’t store data or execute queries itself; instead it offers adapters to “federate” sources (JDBC databases, NoSQL, files, streaming) and pushes operations like filters, projections, and joins down to each system where possible. Calcite’s rule-driven optimizer and extensible type system let you define custom operators and schemas, and projects like Apache Druid, Apache Hive, Apache Drill, and Apache Phoenix use it to power their SQL layers. Its Avatica subproject adds a lightweight, database-agnostic remote JDBC/HTTP wire protocol for embedding SQL services.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Data, Parsing, Validation, Optimization, Queries

Features: SQL parser, SQL validator, relational algebra, cost-based optimizer, rule-based planner, query rewriting, materialized view rewriting, predicate pushdown, join reordering, federated query planning, adapters for heterogeneous data sources, extensible type system, user-defined functions and operators, schema management and virtual schemas, streaming SQL support, semi-structured data support, trait-based optimization framework, enumerable interpreter, Avatica JDBC/HTTP wire protocol, planner and metadata SPI for custom rules and adapters

Website: https://calcite.apache.org/

15 - Crossplane

Crossplane provides Nftiko with a universal control plane across infrastructure and APIs.

Establish a control plane for infrastructure and APIs.

Crossplane is a CNCF project that turns Kubernetes into a universal control plane for infrastructure and platform APIs: cloud resources (databases, buckets, networks), SaaS, and even other clusters are modeled as Kubernetes custom resources and reconciled by providers for AWS, Azure, GCP, and more. Platform teams define higher-level, opinionated abstractions using XRDs and Compositions, publish them as installable packages, and expose safe “claims” so app teams can self-serve PostgreSQLs, queues, or whole app platforms via the same Kubernetes API they already use. This enables GitOps-friendly, declarative, multi-cloud provisioning with fine-grained RBAC, drift detection, and the ability to build bespoke internal platforms without writing bespoke controllers.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Control Plane, Infrastructure, Platform, APIs

Properties: Kubernetes-native control plane (CRDs, controllers), multi-cloud and SaaS provisioning via Providers, Managed Resources, Composite Resource Definitions (XRDs), Compositions, Claims (XRCs), Composition Functions, declarative GitOps workflows, fine-grained RBAC and namespace isolation, drift detection and continuous reconciliation, secret propagation to workloads, health/status via Conditions, policy and validation via OpenAPI schemas, package manager (OCI) for providers and compositions, versioning and upgrades with rollback, observability (events, metrics, logs), pluggable provider ecosystem (including Terrajet), cross-resource references and dependency ordering, cross-namespace publishing and claim binding, works with Helm/Kustomize/Argo CD/Flux

Website: https://www.crossplane.io/

16 - kgateway

Kgateway is an open-source API gateway and ingress controller that implements the Kubernetes Gateway API with its own control plane.

Kubernetes-native API gateway and ingress controller.

Kgateway is an open-source, Envoy-powered, Kubernetes-native API gateway and ingress controller that implements the Kubernetes Gateway API with its own control plane, letting teams manage north-south and east-west traffic with modern routing, resiliency, authn/z, and policy extensions—plus emerging “AI gateway” use cases. Originally created by Solo.io as Gloo Gateway, it was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and accepted as a Sandbox project on March 4, 2025, with ongoing docs, labs, and a GitHub org under the new name.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Gateway, Ingress, Kubernetes

Properties: Gateway Configuration, Default Proxy, Custom Proxy, Listeners, Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA), Traffic management, Destination types, Direct response, Dynamic Forward Proxy (DFP), External processing (ExtProc), Request matching, Redirects, Rewrites, Route delegation, Buffering, Header control, HTTP/2, Health checks, Session affinity, Transformations, Traffic splitting, Route weighting, Resiliency, HTTP conection settings, Mirroring, Outlier detection, Retries, TCP keepalive, Timeouts, Security, Access logging, CORS, Bring your own external auth, Rate limiting, Backend TLS, HTTPS listener, SNI listener, TLS passthrough, ExternalDNS and Cert-Manager, Istio for mTLS, AI Gateway, AI Gateway Configuration, LLM cloud providers, Ollama for local LLMs, Authenticate LLM providers, Model failover, Function calling, Prompt enrichment, Prompt guards, AI Gateway metrics, Cleanup, Inference Extension for local LLMs, Integrations, Agentgateway, Argo Rollouts, AWS ELBs, ExternalDNS & Cert Manager, Inference Extension to the Gateway API, Ingress to service meshes, Observability, OpenTelemetry, Control plane metrics, Gateway proxy metrics, AI Gateway observability

Website: https://kgateway.dev/

17 - Microcks

Microcks provides cloud-/Kubernetes-native tool for API mocking and contract testing.

Mocking and contract testing for APIs using common API artifacts.

Microcks is an open-source, cloud-/Kubernetes-native tool for API mocking and contract testing that turns your existing artifacts—OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, gRPC/Protobuf, GraphQL schemas, Postman collections, SoapUI projects—into live mocks and reusable tests, with CI/CD integrations (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Tekton). It supports both synchronous and event-driven APIs, connecting to brokers like Kafka, MQTT, AMQP/RabbitMQ, NATS, and WebSocket to validate payloads against your specs. Microcks is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation Sandbox project (accepted June 22, 2023).

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Testing, Mocking

Properties: API mocking for REST/gRPC/GraphQL/SOAP, event-driven mocking & contract testing for Kafka/MQTT/AMQP-RabbitMQ/NATS/WebSocket (and other brokers), import from OpenAPI/AsyncAPI/Protobuf/GraphQL/Postman/SoapUI, schema-conformance testing with drift detection, smart dynamic mocks with on-the-fly transformations, GitHub Actions & CI/CD integration, Microcks REST API for automation, Kubernetes-native deployment via Helm and Operator, Avro + Schema Registry support on Kafka, organized repository & web UI for managing mocks and tests.

Website: https://microcks.io/

18 - Structurizr

Structurizr builds upon “diagrams as code”, allowing you to create multiple software architecture diagrams using the C4 model, in a variety of rendering tools, from a single model.

Diagrams as code using domain-driven design.

Structurizr is a collection of tooling for creating software architecture diagrams and documentation based on the C4 model (Context, Containers, Components, and Code). Created by Simon Brown, who also developed the C4 model, Structurizr allows developers and architects to define their architecture as code using domain-specific languages or APIs in various programming languages like Java, .NET, TypeScript, and others. Instead of manually drawing diagrams in tools like Visio or Lucidchart, you describe your architecture programmatically, and Structurizr automatically generates interactive, navigable diagrams from that code. This “diagrams as code” approach ensures that architecture documentation stays in sync with the actual system design, can be version controlled alongside your codebase, and can be easily updated as your architecture evolves. Structurizr includes both a cloud-based service (Structurizr.com) and on-premises options, along with various exporters for rendering diagrams in different formats and a lightweight rendering tool called Structurizr Lite for local use.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: DSL, Domain-Driven Design, Diagrams, C4 Model

Properties: locale, timezone, sort, tooltips, title, description, metadata, enterpriseBoundary, groupSeparator, groups, softwareSystemBoundariesStructurizr, dslEditor, dsl, dsl.source, remote.workspaceId, remote.apiKey, remote.apiSecret, remote.apiUrl, remote.branch, remote.passphrase, inspection, inspection.model, inspection.model.component.description, inspection.model.relationship.technology

Website: https://structurizr.com/

GitHub: https://github.com/structurizr

19 - Kubernetes

Kubernetes is for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications in a declarative way.

Automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications: you define the desired state in a declarative API (Pods, Deployments, Services, etc.), and controllers continuously reconcile reality to match it. It schedules containers across a cluster, handles service discovery and load balancing, performs rolling updates and rollbacks, manages configuration and secrets, and mounts storage via volumes. Kubernetes is highly extensible—Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), Operators, and admission webhooks let teams add new APIs and policies—while its ecosystem (Helm, Kustomize, GitOps tools) provides repeatable, cloud-agnostic operations from laptops to multi-cloud.

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: Containers, Deployment, Scaling, Management

Properties: Container orchestration, declarative API and desired state, scheduling and bin packing, service discovery (ClusterIP/DNS), load balancing (Service/Ingress/Gateway API), rolling updates and rollbacks, self-healing (restarts/rescheduling), horizontal pod autoscaling, vertical pod autoscaling, jobs and cron jobs, namespaces and multi-tenancy, RBAC and authentication, network policies, ConfigMaps and Secrets, storage volumes and CSI provisioning, affinity/anti-affinity and topology spread, taints and tolerations, resource requests/limits and quotas, admission control and policy (Pod Security Standards), Custom Resource Definitions and Operators, observability hooks (events/metrics/logs), audit logging, node and cluster autoscaling, Helm/Kustomize/GitOps tooling integration.

Website: https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/