POST/CON 25 Keynote Recap: Level 2, the Distribution Disconnect

This blog is the third in a series recapping everything we shared at POST/CON 25. New here? Start with our keynote recap, then read Level 1: The Fragmented Workflow to see why we’re treating API development like a boss battle. Or jump straight to the keynote replay:

You’ve conquered Level 1. Your team now ships APIs faster than ever, with aligned processes, synced specs, and automation smoothing every release, no longer weighed down by the Disconnected Stack.

But by Monday morning, cracks appear. Duplicate authentication projects pop up. A strategic partner can’t find your API spec. Teams rebuild capabilities you already shipped. AI agents stall without access to definitions.

Mission brief: Turn APIs into products, not projects

Welcome to Level 2: The Distribution Disconnect. The new challenge is scale, visibility, and adoption. Your next boss, The Invisible API, is quietly draining resources and revenue through duplication, missed opportunities, and slowed execution.

APIs don’t drive value just because they exist. They drive value when they’re actually being used by the right teams, at the right time, in the right context. Building technically sound APIs is only the beginning. The strategic challenge is turning those APIs into products: assets that are visible, trusted, and easy to integrate, whether by internal teams, partners, or intelligent systems.

The distinction between APIs and API products comes down to intent. APIs solve technical problems, and API products create business leverage. They’re built not just to function, but to be found, adopted, and evolved by internal teams, external partners, and AI agents. Treating APIs as products means aligning architecture with market discovery, designing for seamless integration, and investing in the operational maturity needed for long-term differentiation.

Let’s dive deeper into how Postman helps you make that transformation.

At a glance:

• Organizations (Private Beta)
• Private API Network
• Slack and Microsoft Teams Integration
• Partner Workspaces
• Postman API Network
  • Notebooks
  • Activity Feeds
• Postman Insights (Open Beta)
  • Repro Mode
• Postman Monitors

Mission 2.1: Distribute and collaborate

Problem: Your APIs are trapped in organizational silos, creating a cascade of inefficiencies. Internal teams unknowingly duplicate work. Partners abandon integrations due to outdated documentation and broken onboarding flows. External developers can’t find or trust your APIs in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Meanwhile, AI agents hit dead ends when trying to access your services because they require structured, discoverable API definitions.

Objective: Scale your API impact by transforming them from internal tools into discoverable, trustworthy products that drive adoption for:

• Internal teams that need to build faster

• External partners who want to integrate without friction

• AI agents that require structured, reliable access to business capabilities

Organizations (Private Beta): Structure your teams like your company actually works

When your API footprint grows beyond a few dozen endpoints, flat team structures become a liability. Everyone has access to everything, but nobody can find what they need. Security teams lose visibility into who’s accessing what. Leadership can’t assess their organization’s true API capabilities or identify redundant investments.

Enterprise structure via Organizations provides:

• Department-based grouping that reflects real organizational boundaries

• Role-based access controls that scale with your team

• Delegated administration that distributes ownership without losing oversight

Private API Network: Your internal API marketplace

The fastest way to prevent duplicate work is to make existing work discoverable. The Private API Network creates a searchable, browsable catalog of your organization’s APIs, accessible to internal teams.

Internal API discovery via Private API Network includes:

• Secure, searchable hub for internal API discovery

• Cross-product sharing between different business units

• Integration with developer portal tools like Backstage

Example in action: Your payments and identity teams both need user authentication. Instead of building separate solutions, the payments team discovers the existing identity API on the Private API Network, enabling reuse and preventing duplicate development efforts.

Slack and Microsoft Teams Integration: Updates where teams actually work

Context switching kills momentum. Real-time API activity alerts delivered directly to your team channels keep everyone informed without breaking their flow.

Real-time updates via Slack and Teams integrations deliver:

• Instant notifications when APIs change, update, or encounter issues

• Collaborative commenting on collections and documentation

• Shared context that eliminates “Did you see…” conversations

Example in action: Your payments API gets a security update. Instead of email chains and missed Slack messages, every consuming team gets a notification in their dedicated channel with clear upgrade paths and timeline expectations.

Partner Workspaces: Co-development without the security headaches

Email attachments and zip files are the bane of modern API partnerships. Partner Workspaces offer secure, real-time collaboration environments that are specifically designed for working with external partners.

Secure co-development via Partner Workspaces includes:

• (New!) SSO and domain capture for seamless partner access

• (New!) Streamlined access controls that protect sensitive data

• (New!) Central Partnerships page for unified management of all your external relationships

• Real-time update feeds to ensure that partners never work with stale information

Example in action: You’re co-developing a new checkout flow with a major retail partner. Instead of emailing ZIP files back and forth, both teams work in a shared Partner Workspace with up-to-date collections, real-time updates, and secure access controls. The integration launches weeks ahead of schedule.

Postman API Network: Global distribution and discovery

With over 100,000 APIs from 18,000+ companies, the Postman API Network is the world’s largest public API directory.

Global distribution via the Postman API Network provides:

• Verified public profiles that build trust and credibility

• Search and trending visibility for organic discovery

• Fork, view, and watcher metrics that demonstrate adoption

• Professional presence for developer marketing

Problem solved: Enables global adoption and trust-building through public exposure, helping APIs reach developers worldwide without expensive marketing campaigns.

(New!) Notebooks: Interactive documentation that developers actually use

First impressions matter. When external developers struggle with your API documentation, deals stall and relationships suffer. Notebooks combine tutorials, reference material, and live API calls into guided, executable experiences developers can test in real time.

Interactive onboarding via Notebooks features:

• Run in Postman integration for instant API testing

• Step-by-step tutorials that onboard developers faster

• Live, executable API examples that always reflect current behavior

Problem solved: Onboards developers faster and reduces support tickets by providing interactive, executable documentation that replaces outdated static text.

(New!) Activity Feeds: Change management for API consumers

Silent breaking changes erode trust. When your API evolves without warning, partner integrations break, support teams get overwhelmed, and business relationships deteriorate. Activity Feeds ensure that every API evolution is communicated clearly to everyone who depends on it.

Change communication via Activity Feeds delivers:

• Real-time notifications for new versions, endpoints, and deprecations

• Alerts for breaking changes with clear migration guidance

• Community insights that surface adoption patterns and developer feedback

Problem solved: Keeps API consumers and partners informed, preventing silent breakages that lead to lost trust and emergency debugging sessions.

Mission 2.2: Monitor and evolve the API

Problem: Production APIs are often black boxes. Issues are only discovered through user complaints, debugging relies on incomplete telemetry, and real usage patterns remain unclear. When APIs break, engineering teams scramble with fragmented information while support tickets flood in from frustrated partners and internal teams. Meanwhile, consumers discover breaking API changes through failures, not proactive communication. This experience quickly erodes developer trust, delays partner integrations, and turns APIs into operational liabilities.

Objective: Enable teams to identify and resolve issues before they impact users, partners, or business operations. Maintain API reliability and support safe evolution through:

• Real-time visibility

• Intelligent monitoring

• Actionable insights into production behavior

Postman Insights (Open Beta): Lightweight observability designed for APIs

Traditional observability tools often require complex setup and focus on infrastructure metrics rather than API behavior. Insights provides API-first monitoring that’s operational in minutes, not months.

API observability via Postman Insights provides:

• Real-time traffic visibility showing who’s calling what, when, and how

• Error pattern detection that identifies issues before they become outages

• Smart alerting based on API-specific metrics rather than generic system thresholds

Problem solved: Observability built for APIs with zero setup overhead or blind spots. You get actionable production insights without complex infrastructure, detecting issues before they become customer-impacting outages.

Insights is now in Beta for Postman’s Free, Basic, and Professional plan customers. Sign up for beta access.

Repro Mode (Part of Insights): Debug production issues with full context

Debugging production failures requires complete request context. Repro Mode automatically captures all relevant request context and loads it directly into Postman for investigation.

Production debugging with Repro Mode includes:

• Automatic capture of failed request details, including headers, auth, payload, and environment variables

• One-click import into Postman’s request builder for immediate reproduction

• Full context preservation, ensuring every piece of data needed for debugging is available

Example in action: Your API starts throwing 500 errors for a specific partner’s requests, but traditional monitoring misses it because overall traffic looks normal. Insights immediately flags the pattern, Repro Mode captures the exact failing request, and your team fixes the issue before the partner even notices.

Postman Monitors: Continuous API health patrols

Prevention beats reactive debugging. Monitors provide continuous API health checks that catch issues before they impact users or AI agents.

Proactive API health checks via Postman Monitors offer:

• Endpoint uptime monitoring with customizable check intervals

• Workflow validation that tests multi-step API sequences

• Custom patrol routes that simulate real user behavior patterns

Problem solved: Prevent issues before users or AI agents encounter them, maintaining trust through proactive and continuous monitoring.

Mission Complete: You’ve defeated the Invisible API

Your APIs have transformed from hidden technical assets into strategic business drivers:

• For engineering teams: APIs are discoverable, reusable, and monitored, ending costly duplication and reactive firefighting

• For business leaders: API partnerships accelerate rather than stall, with reliable integrations that strengthen relationships

• For the organization: your API capability becomes a competitive moat rather than operational overhead

Your APIs drive business value through increased adoption, accelerated partnership velocity, and operational excellence that scales with your ambitions. The Invisible API has been defeated—replaced by a strategic asset that strengthens every part of your business.

Ready for Level 3?

You’ve solved coordination and distribution. Your APIs are discoverable, adoptable, and reliable. But the game is changing again.

When AI agents consume an API, they expect it to be intelligent, predictable, and orchestratable. In Level 3: The Orchestration Crisis, we’ll face the Inconsistent System: where traditional API patterns break down under the demands of autonomous agents and intelligent workflows.

Because in the age of AI, APIs are the essential building blocks of intelligent systems. And building those systems requires an entirely new playbook.