## Bridging the API (and API access) gap between AI coding tools, agents, and the APIs that they “eat”

Data might be the fuel for AI. But APIs are the proper way to package that “fuel” as AI-ready “food” is through the API.

AI coding tools can do a lot without APIs, but at some point they’ll need to be able to:

• - Discover APIs that deliver API endpoints as “tools” or critical functionality
• - Seamlessly register for those APIs
• - Get key or credential-based (i.e., secure) access to those APIs
• - Consume those APIs

. . . and all ideally without the engineer having to leave their integrated development environment (IDE) or favorite AI coding tool. And it's not *just* AI coding tools. Agents will also need similar kinds of access to APIs to execute their tasks and ultimately provide value for the organization. 

Unfortunately, this workflow hasn't been available for the vast majority of AI coding tools or agents. Up until today, even if an API is discovered, getting credentials and secure access is still a slow, manual process. 

This changes with the new Konnect MCP-enabled Developer Portal access. Let’s explore how it works. 

### Seamless, native, MCP-enabled API access

[Back in April 2025](https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/mcp-server)Back in April 2025, we released the first Konnect MCP server as an OSS project for all Konnect users and early MCP adopters. We’ve learned a lot since then, and we’ve started building out a newer wave of task and product-specific MCP server functionality that will support all of Konnect. While this is a journey we will embark on across time, we’re excited to announce that you can now enable AI coding tool access to your Konnect-managed APIs by turning your Developer Portals into MCP servers.

Kong's Konnect Developer Portal MCP Server fundamentally reshapes the AI application API discovery and access workflow by transforming any Konnect Developer Portal into an MCP server with a single click. This integration enables AI agents and coding assistants to interact with your API catalog using natural language, allowing developers to discover relevant APIs, request access programmatically, and generate production-ready client code — all within their development environment. Instead of context-switching between documentation sites and IDEs, developers can simply ask their AI assistant to "find the payment processing API and generate a Python client," and the agent handles discovery, authentication setup, and code generation automatically.

The implications for developer velocity are substantial. Businesses that publish APIs to Konnect Developer Portals can now make their entire API ecosystem immediately accessible to the growing number of AI-powered development tools that support MCP — from Claude and other AI assistants to specialized coding agents. 

This isn't just about convenience; it's about democratizing API access across development teams.

Junior developers gain the same discovery capabilities as senior engineers, cross-functional teams can rapidly prototype integrations without deep API expertise, and the time from "I need this capability" to "I have working code" compresses from hours or days to minutes.

By bridging the gap between traditional API management and the emerging AI and agentic development paradigm, Kong enables organizations to maximize the value of their API investments while accelerating the pace of innovation across their development organizations. 

## Introducing KAi and AI-powered API platforms

Yes, Konnect is all about helping your organization better leverage AI for your enterprise automation, integration, and agentic use cases. 

But we also want to enable you, the Konnect users, to leverage AI to better use Konnect. This is where KAi comes in.

KAi is our brand new agentic assistant in Konnect, and KAi will help you automate and speed up some of today’s most manual and complex tasks within your API platform program. We have big plans for KAi, but as of today, KAi can help you with the following.

• - **Better automate API governance:** KAi acts as a governance layer, proactively scanning for policy violations, identifying security gaps, and suggesting automated remediations to ensure all services remain compliant with organizational standards.
• - **Speed up debugging and issue resolution:** KAi accelerates troubleshooting by analyzing complex API traffic patterns, identifying the root cause of errors or latency, and providing developers with clear, actionable steps for remediation, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
• - **Accelerate API design and development:** KAi assists developers in building high-quality, performant, and secure APIs. By providing real-time feedback and best-practice recommendations during the design phase, KAi reduces the time it takes to accomplish day-to-day API platform tasks.

Interested in using KAi? Just sign up for Konnect. KAi will be right there.

### Where Konnect goes next: Announcing MCP-powered AI integration, the MCP Composer, and the MCP Runner

If you’re at API Summit, you’ve likely heard the news: 

We’re claiming that IPaaS is dying. 

And AI + MCP + API–powered integration is taking its place.

Today, we're excited to announce that we’re making Konnect the platform where you not only manage your APIs, but actually build the future of your organization’s AI-powered integration platform. This will admittedly take time and will occupy much of our roadmap next year, but we’re excited to announce the beginning of that journey with the **Kong MCP Composer** and **Kong MCP Runner** products in Konnect, both slated to be released in early 2026. 

### Why is Kong suited to take on AI integration? Because you already have “AI food” under Konnect management

There are many reasons why we expanded Konnect to support:

• - Traditional HTTP-based APIs with our API Gateway
• - LLM connectivity with our LLM Gateway
• - MCP connectivity with our MCP Gateway
• - Service-to-service communication with our Service Mesh
• - Event streaming resources with our Event Gateway
• - And finally, locally hosted or cloud-hosted workloads with our multiple Gateway deployment patterns

Yes, organizations already have today’s challenges where they need to be able to build, run, discover, and govern these resources regardless of the additional demands that AI introduces. However, we knew something about these resources as we watched AI develop:** these resources are the food that AI coding assistants, agents, and other AI applications will have to “eat” in order to fuel themselves as they execute tasks for your business. And the future of integration looks like being able to surface and transform these assets for consumption by AI applications.**

And much of this will happen under the umbrella of MCP-enabled access to these kinds of resources. 

### The AI Composer and AI Runner: Build and run elegant AI integration patterns

The new AI Composer will be a brand new product in Konnect that will enable you to:

• - **Discover APIs as tools:** Discover existing APIs and their endpoints as potential tools for your MCP servers, and avoid redundant API and tool creation efforts. 
• - **Redesign existing APIs to be more MCP-ready:** Take existing Kong-managed APIs and automatically reformat them as bundled, fit-for-purpose tools that are purpose-built for MCP and LLM consumption.  
• - **Generate servers and map tools: **Design and generate local or remote MCP servers. Map those MCP servers to existing APIs as tools or tools that you generated using Konnect.
• - **Enable real-time data access for MCP:** Leverage more than just APIs as tools. Combine Konnect MCP integration with Event Gateway and leverage secure, productized event data as real-time tools for MCP.  

With the new AI Composer, you can start designing and generating the necessary code and components to build elegant, MCP-powered integrations and advanced MCP-powered automation workflows that will begin to replace your brittle, connector-based integration patterns.

Once composed, you’ll be able to use the AI runner to run the integration and execute transformations securely, reliably, and with high performance.

The future of integration looks like API and AI connectivity. And Konnect is your API and AI connectivity platform.

## Wrapping up: What to do next?

As mentioned earlier, both the new MCP Composer and MCP Runner will be released in early 2026, and we’re currently finalizing the details of an early access program. 

Interested in an early access program? Please reach out to your main Kong point of contact. Be informed that this program will likely be restricted to a certain number of customers at a time, so there may be a delay in getting access to the product or program at first.

We can’t wait to see what you build with Kong.