Get involved
This is an announcement of intent, not a finished plan. Almost everything below the two repositories is genuinely open, and the useful window for arguing about it is now.
Where things go
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Problems with the CLI or engine | spectral-cli issues |
| Problems with the ruleset format, the schema, or the spec | spectral-rules issues |
| Direction, governance, naming, where this should live | the discussion thread |
Please keep direction out of the issue trackers. Issues are for things that are broken; the discussion is for things that are undecided.
The one ask
If you depend on the Spectral ruleset format, say so — publicly or privately.
That is the whole ask. Not a commitment, not an endorsement, nothing legally binding, no obligation to contribute anything. Just: we rely on this and we would like to see it keep moving.
There is a reason it matters. Every conversation about a permanent home — a foundation, a standards body, a nonprofit — comes down to the same question: who actually uses this? That question has never had a public answer, because the format’s users are mostly invisible. They are governments with mandatory design rules, enterprises running it behind an internal facade, and small teams who wired it into CI and never thought about it again.
A list of people saying “we depend on this” is the most useful artifact this effort can produce in its first month.
Two ways to do it, and they count the same.
Add your voice publicly → Email privately →
Plenty of people cannot post something like this under their employer's name without a conversation first, and some organizations have policies that make it impossible. A private note straight to my inbox is just as useful — it will be counted, and nothing is attributed or shared without your explicit say-so.
What is still open
- The name. Both repositories keep the upstream name for now so the lineage stays obvious, and
the working codename for the effort is Spotlight — which is why this site is hosted at
spotlight-rules.com. Neither is permanent. A rename is expected eventually, trademark considerations alone make it likely, and the right name is a community question rather than one person’s call. Suggestions welcome in the discussion. - The home. API Commons for now, possibly permanently. The OpenAPI Initiative is a candidate, though its charter currently bars tooling. The Linux Foundation is a candidate. A European home is a candidate. A nonprofit under API Commons is a candidate.
- Governance. How decisions get made, who makes them, and what the contribution model is.
- Scope and sequencing. What gets supported first, and what waits.
What is not open
- Compatibility. Existing rulesets keep working. Divergence will be deliberate, versioned, and documented.
- JavaScript and browser support. Non-negotiable, for reasons covered in scope.
- vacuum stays supported. This is not a competition between engines.
If you have an unmerged contribution upstream
Several finished, useful pull requests have been sitting in the upstream queue for months or years. If one of them is yours, please bring it here. Getting those merged is the fastest, most legible way to demonstrate that a fork means your work actually lands.
To SmartBear
The invitation made publicly in January 2025 still stands: donate Spectral to the OpenAPI Initiative. It would make most of this unnecessary, and it would be the best outcome for everyone who depends on it.