Currently, testing APIs requires you to get familiar with different tooling, depending on programming language. It also adds infrastructural and operational overhead, if you want to run automated (continuous) tests. Monitoring your APIs over time is often a forgotten aspect, that could lead to service disruptions and business losses. Likely, you also depend on third-party APIs, which could introduce unforeseen risks and increase troubleshooting efforts in case of failure. Additionally, you need to make sure, that your APIs are secured against incoming threats.

Me and Sebastian started working on Step CI after meeting on YC’s Startup School Co-Founder matching platform. Previously, I have worked as a Software Developer and Sebastian worked as a Financial Specialist and Business Consultant. At Step CI, I’m responsible for the tech, while Sebastian takes care of business operations.

With Step CI, we offer a simple declarative way to write tests, that are programming-language agnostic and work for different API paradigms (REST, GraphQL, XML). Our infrastructure lets you run tests without operational overhead. On top of that, we monitor popular third-party APIs and let you know when these fail. We are also looking forward to integrate your favourite tooling, such as Git, Slack and Pagerduty with Step CI.

Compared to other tools we embrace the idea of multi-step testing process rather than writing more tests (this is where the name comes from!). We want to make a tool, that other developers love to use. We’re also actively considering open-source as a way to spread our work.

Today, we would like to invite you to try the demo and tell us what you think. You can also subscribe to our newsletter or reach out on Matrix (#stepci:matrix.org) or via e-mail ([email protected]) any time of the day.