Catching the Drift: How APIs Quietly Break Their Contracts (and How to Stop It)

API drift occurs when production APIs quietly diverge from their OpenAPI documents, often going unnoticed until integrations break or trust in the docs erodes.

In this technical session, we’ll briefly explain what drift looks like and why it’s so easy to miss, then show how Swagger Contract Testing turns drift into a visible, actionable signal by continuously verifying real API behavior against OpenAPI using the new Drift CLI.

What you’ll learn in this 30 mins session:

• Running the Drift CLI against a live API and an OpenAPI document
• Real examples of drift being detected
• How drift shows up as a clear, machine-readable contract verification result
• Where this fits in a typical developer workflow