One interface, every protocol

clevengermatt

Hi HN. OpenBindings is an open spec for describing what a service does once and binding it to any protocol. You define operations with input/output schemas, then point at your existing OpenAPI doc, proto file, MCP server, or whatever else. The spec doesn't replace any of them. They're inputs. The short version of why: programming languages have had interfaces and duck typing forever. You code to a shape, not an implementation. The web never got a successful equivalent at the network boundary. OpenBindings is an attempt at that. What's here today: - The spec (v0.1.0): https://openbindings.com/spec - ob CLI: https://github.com/openbindings/ob - Go SDK: https://github.com/openbindings/openbindings-go - TypeScript SDK: https://github.com/openbindings/openbindings-ts - Binding executors for different protocols Fastest way to try it: brew install openbindings/tap/ob ob demo That starts a coffee shop service on six protocols. `ob op exec localhost:8080 getMenu` calls it. The CLI discovers the OBI (OpenBindings Interface) at /.well-known/openbindings and handles the rest. Would love feedback on the spec design.

quellhorst

Shouldn't AI have made this less of a problem by now?

vivzkestrel

this means AWS and GCP ll have to implement your specification right?

riwsky

The web IS the duck typing equivalent at the network boundary! That’s why plenty of alternative service providers can and do implement eg object storage APIs that work with aws s3 client libraries, or LLM APIs that work with Claude Code. The reasons these use cases are standardized (while others remain fragmented) are economic, not technical (lock-in isn’t as profitable for these alt services as raw adoption)—and so a purely technical solution like this is unlikely to address the crux of the problem. Even purely on the technical level, this seemingly hasn't internalized the lessons of https://xkcd.com/927/