---
published: true
layout: post
title: Outside-In View Is What Agents Will See
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/apievangelist/api-evangelist-images/outside-in-view-is-what-agents-will-see.png
date: 2026-07-27
author: Kin Lane
tags:
  - Discovery
  - Agents
  - AI
  - Kin Score
  - Agent Readiness
  - Profiling
  - Strategy
---
I'm up to 25,439 providers and 106,926 APIs in [APIs.io](https://apis.io) and API Evangelist now. I'm making good progress working my way through top industries, the [portfolios of top venture capital](https://apis.io/vcs/), and even the secondary markets. My profiling approach has picked up significant pace with the help of Claude, where I don't always get things right the first time, but this is OK. The outside-in agentic view of startups and even [Fortune 1000](https://providers.apievangelist.com/fortune-1000/) companies is an important lens, despite what is missing from time to time.

I have a robust set of Agent Skills I use to guide Claude when it comes to looking at the website and portals of any company, institution, organization, or government agency. These skills look for APIs, artifacts, and operational properties. The first pass it won't always pick up everything, and with a second pass it tends to have more context, and does better. But depending on the structure of the website and portal, how much JavaScript is used, and other elements, the results will vary. Once I do my manual look around, I will provide even more context that Claude can use to make sense of what is going on, and gets better at filling in the cracks.

Even with all this work, I regularly get emails from API providers telling me what I am missing. This is fine. This is part of the process. Being wrong or incomplete works well to get a provider's attention. Something is missing because my agents couldn't find it. Often also because I couldn't find it. You'd be surprised how hard it is to navigate websites and portals to find things. I get it. Those of us who are building these sites and portals are too close. I make a lot of the same mistakes on my own websites and portals, and Claude helps me get better at it, and fill in the cracks over and over until I get to a good place with things.

I much prefer going through API portals myself. However, I am finding Claude to provide a useful lens for evolving my existing outside-in approach to understanding what companies are up to when it comes to doing business. Yes, I miss a lot without internal access, and sure there are plenty of private partner portals, but as I've always said, your public API portal says a lot about your company and how you are able to respond to market forces. I am going all in on using the current agentic hype to push on more companies to show their cards. If the world is all agentic now, there is NO reason that you shouldn't have a public API portal, and be publishing documentation for what you have to offer agents, along with the onboarding they need. While this is a public front door for agents, you (should) have full control over what they actually consume.

If you look at the [APIs.io](https://apis.io) or [API Evangelist](https://providers.apievangelist.com) profile page for your company, organization, institution, or government agency and do not see everything you have, it is likely that it is not communicated in a way that is accessible to agents or makes sense to them. There are a wealth of signals I am looking for when it comes to the composite and agent-ready [Kin Score](https://apis.io/rating/), and my agents are the front line of helping me gather these signals. Make sure they can find what they need, and if it doesn't exist, the Kin Score page should provide you with a checklist of the work your team has on your road map. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions, I am more than happy to help you improve that outside-in view of what agents will see, so that you float to the top of APIs.io and API Evangelist listings and search.