netapi

1. Project Summary

Field Value

Project

netapi — Network Automation CLI

Priority

P0 (Critical) — daily driver

Status

Active

Owner

Evan Rosado

Language

Python 3.11+

License

Apache-2.0

Repository

_projects/personal/netapi

Commercial Derivative

Kora CLI (Go rewrite, public)

2. Problem Statement

Network engineers managing multi-vendor environments face three compounding problems:

  1. Every vendor has a different API. Cisco ISE exposes five separate APIs (ERS, MnT, DataConnect, pxGrid, OpenAPI). WLCs speak RESTCONF. Firewalls speak REST. Switches speak SSH. There is no unified abstraction — every integration is a one-off script.

  2. Authentication is fragmented. Each vendor uses a different auth mechanism, different credential formats, different session models. Engineers end up with hardcoded passwords in scripts, stale tokens, and inconsistent secrets management.

  3. Automation scripts rot. Without architectural discipline, network automation code becomes a graveyard of copy-pasted scripts that break silently when APIs change. No composability, no reuse, no error hierarchy.

netapi solves these by providing a composable Python library that follows Atomic Design principles — primitives compose into protocols, protocols compose into capabilities, capabilities compose into vendor-specific operations, and vendors compose into workflows.

3. Related

4. Improvement Proposals

Proposals from ecosystem audit — 2026-04-04. For team review and prioritization.
Priority Proposal Rationale Effort

P1

Add hands-on quickstart with real command examples

12 partials document architecture and vendor support but no runnable examples. Users need netapi ise backup → output → explanation.

M

P1

Add field-notes partial (vendor integration decisions)

15+ vendor integrations involve API version choices, auth method tradeoffs, and rate limit strategies. These decisions must be documented.

M

P2

Command reference matrix (vendors x operations)

A single table showing which operations (backup, query, configure, monitor) are supported per vendor enables quick capability discovery.

M

P2

Error handling and troubleshooting guide

Network automation errors are vendor-specific (ISE returns XML, WLC returns JSON, IOS returns CLI output). Document error patterns per vendor.

L

P3

Performance benchmarks for bulk operations

Bulk ISE endpoint queries, mass WLC client lookups, etc. Document expected throughput and optimization strategies.

M

4.1. Command Reference Matrix

Proposed structure for a partials/command-matrix.adoc partial:

Vendor Backup Query Configure Monitor DataConnect Auth Type

ISE

ERS + pxGrid

WLC

 — 

 — 

RESTCONF

…​

5. Metadata

Field Value

Author

Evan Rosado

Date Created

2025

Last Updated

2026-03-30

Status

Active

Next Review

2026-04-15