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AWS Open-Sources Smithy API Models for Public Developer Tooling Access

Canopy DevTools

AWS announced it has open-sourced its Smithy API model definitions — the machine-readable API shape descriptions that back AWS service SDKs, documentation generation, and code generation pipelines — making them publicly accessible for developer tooling. Smithy is AWS's interface definition language (IDL) used to formally describe AWS service APIs; open-sourcing the model definitions enables third-party SDK authors, API tooling developers, and infrastructure-as-code engineers to generate, validate, and build against AWS APIs without relying on AWS-published SDKs. The release was noted in InfoQ's open source releases section and is particularly relevant to teams building custom AWS integrations or multi-cloud tooling.

Key Takeaways

  • AWS open-sourced Smithy API model files for its public services — enables third-party SDK generation, API linting, documentation tooling, and code generation using the official AWS service shapes
  • Smithy is AWS's IDL for defining AWS service APIs; models include operation names, input/output shapes, and error types — previously available only via AWS-published SDKs and docs
  • Relevant to SDK authors, CDK construct library builders, and engineers generating typed AWS API clients outside the official SDK ecosystem; models available at smithy.io/

Original source: InfoQ