My microservice is so micro it needs three YAML files, a service mesh, two sidecars, and a dedicated SRE just to return { “ok”: true }.

Microservices promised to revolutionize software architecture by breaking applications into small, manageable pieces. And they delivered — sort of. We got the small pieces. Thousands of them. Each one immaculately designed, fully documented, independently deployable.

And completely meaningless until something else comes along to give them purpose.

A /users/{id} endpoint sitting in production, waiting. A pricing API returning JSON to nobody. A notification service with nothing to say. We’ve spent a decade building an industry of lonely services.

What if we’ve had it backwards the whole time?

What if instead of building services that expose capabilities and wait to be useful, we built systems that define what they need to get things done?

More jokes ideas

A co-service walks into a bar and says ‘I’ll have whatever makes me useful.’ The microservices are still arguing about who handles drink orders.

Microservice dating profile: ‘I expose RESTful endpoints. I’m horizontally scalable. Looking for someone who knows what to do with me’.

Our AuthService depends on ConfigService which depends on SecretsService which depends on AuthService. We call this ‘job security.’