Top-down configuration (as opposed to discovery like UDDI) via something like zookeeper or dns solves this problem. And APIs shouldn't do WSDL either, the code and docs should document the API. It's possible to add so many over-engineered layers of YAGNI flexibility that almost no one can understand what the heck is going on or how to hack on it, e.g., Eclipse plugins.

Keep it really simple, until it breaks too often.