API Path Mapping

Path mapping is for the week you realise the route catalogue and the live gateway have drifted. We take a short log window and draw who called what, which location blocks still fire, and which upstreams still answer.

The sheet is a map, not a topology poster. Client groups sit on the left, named routes in the middle, upstreams on the right. Thickness of the line is request count in the window. A route that exists in the catalogue but never appears in the log is printed in a paler ink so you can retire it on purpose.

The sitting is ninety minutes. We walk the unexpected edges: a mobile client still on a deprecated path, a health check that looks like a user, an internal job that accounts for half the 401s. You leave with the map and a list of routes that deserve a second look, not a rewritten gateway on the same afternoon.

We do not invent clients you cannot see in the logs. If identity is hashed or missing, the left-hand column stays coarse. TLS termination details appear only when the log carries them. Price follows the number of distinct routes, not the size of the company.