Managed integrations for APIs that are hard to reach.
Some integrations are hard for reasons that have nothing to do with the code. Gated API is our name for the work of getting them approved, scoped, traced, metered, and kept alive. It is in validation, not shipped, and this page describes the intended shape rather than a product you can buy today.
- Stage
- In validation
- Availability
- Not open for signup
- Design partners
- A small number, by conversation
- Launch date
- Not set
Nothing here is live. If that changes, this block changes with it.
The code is rarely the hard part.
A team can usually write the client in an afternoon. What stalls the project is everything around it: approval, scope, limits, obligations, and the year of upkeep that follows.
Onboarding is a process, not a signup
Some providers do not hand out access from a developer portal. There is an application, a review, a contract, and a queue, and none of it moves faster because your sprint ends on Friday.
Scope has to be negotiated
What you are allowed to read, write, and store is agreed up front. Getting that agreement right takes more conversation than code, and getting it wrong is expensive later.
Limits are not suggestions
Rate ceilings, quota windows, and burst rules differ per provider. Ignoring them does not produce a faster integration, it produces a suspended one.
Compliance follows the data
Consent records, retention rules, audit trails, and who may see what. These obligations do not disappear because the integration is technically finished.
Responses drift
Fields get added, enums grow, a deprecation notice lands in an email nobody reads. Somebody has to notice before your users do.
Somebody has to keep it working
Credentials expire, contacts change jobs, and providers reorganize their endpoints. The build is the short part. The upkeep is the long part.
Customer-authorized, provider-respecting integration infrastructure.
The customer authorizes the access. The provider sees who is calling. We build and operate the layer in between, and we design it so both sides could read the log without an argument.
Access
- Provider onboarding handled as a process with dates and owners
- Customer authorization captured with clearly defined scopes
- Credentials held under least privilege and revocable on request
- Scope changes recorded, not applied quietly
Requests
- A trace id on every call, from request through to response
- Retry with backoff for transient failures, defined outcomes for permanent ones
- Webhook receipt, verification, and replay handling
- Rate-limit awareness so provider ceilings are respected, not tested
Shape
- Normalized endpoint shapes across providers doing similar things
- Consistent error semantics instead of per-provider surprises
- Documented fields so integration work is a read, not an investigation
- Versioned changes when a provider forces one
Accounting
- Usage metering per customer and per scope
- Monitoring with alerts routed to a named owner
- A request log that answers questions about what happened
- Recovery notes written before they are needed
What Gated API is not.
This is the part of the page that decides whether we are a fit. The boundary below is not a disclaimer we added for legal comfort. It is the design constraint the whole product line is built inside, and we will hold it even when a deal depends on bending it.
Not pooled credentials
No shared key sitting behind a facade serving many customers. Access is authorized by the customer it belongs to.
Not resold access
We do not buy provider access and sell it on. The commercial relationship with the provider stays where it belongs.
Not scraping
No harvesting pages, no undocumented endpoints, no pretending to be a browser. If there is no sanctioned interface, there is no integration.
Not a workaround
Provider terms, rate limits, and scope rules are constraints we design inside, not obstacles we route around.
Not a way past a refusal
If a provider has said no to your use case, this does not change that answer. We are not a second door.
Not anonymity
Traffic is attributable. The provider can see who is calling and why, because that is what makes the arrangement durable.
If your requirement only works when a provider does not find out, it is not a requirement we can take. We would rather lose the engagement than build something that stops working the day somebody looks at it properly.
Authorize, trace, normalize, meter.
The panel below is drawn to show the intended shape of a single request. It is an illustration, not a screenshot of a running system, because there is no running system to screenshot yet.
Illustration of an intended design. Identifiers, timings, and scopes are invented. No customer or provider data is shown.
In validation. Not for sale yet.
We are working through this with a small number of design partners to find out whether the shape above is the right one. There is no signup, no waiting list promise, and no date we are prepared to invent for you.
If you have an integration that fits the description, the useful next step is a conversation about your specific provider and scope. In the meantime we already do this work directly, as a managed integration engagement.
What we are testing
- Whether the onboarding work is repeatable across providers
- Whether one normalized shape survives contact with real differences
- What the metering has to record to settle a dispute
- Who actually owns the relationship after handoff
What we are not claiming
- That it is live, or that anyone is using it today
- A launch date, a price, or a published tier
- Coverage of any named provider
- That validation will end in a product at all
Status, last reviewed with this page: in validation. If you are reading a claim anywhere on this site that Gated API is available, it is out of date and we want to know about it.
Have an integration stuck on approval rather than code?
Tell us the provider, the scope you need, and what has blocked it so far. If it can be done inside the provider's rules, we will say how. If it cannot, we will say that instead.