Composable architecture isn’t a buzzword; it’s the overdue upgrade to lessons we learned the hard way in the SOA era. We share a pragmatic path from heavyweight standards and ESB monocultures to API-first, domain-driven systems that actually deliver reuse, speed, and resilience across cloud and on-prem. With guest Brad Drysdale, we map the shift from monoliths to distributed services, the rise of REST and gateways, and why a discovery-led mindset matters more than any protocol.

We dig into the techniques that make composability real: treat API contracts as products in their own right, with owners, roadmaps, and strong versioning; build a living catalogue that developers can trust; and use domain-driven design to create bounded contexts that align services to business language. We talk openly about governance debt, API sprawl, and the trap of point-to-point integrations disguised as microservices. Then we connect the dots to modern DevOps — Kubernetes, Terraform, and infrastructure as code — showing how to run heterogeneous, multi-cloud estates without drowning in complexity.

Now AI raises the stakes. Agents need secure, reliable access to knowledge and tools; contracts machines can interpret; and guardrails that earn trust. We compare REST and OpenAPI to emerging agent-to-agent standards like MCP, and explain why the future likely builds on today’s contracts rather than replacing them. Finally, we explore vibe coding’s next act: vibe orchestration, mapping intent to capabilities letting AI assemble outcomes from a curated service catalogue. The takeaway is simple: composability scales when you fund shared capabilities, measure adoption, and make reuse the default.

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