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title: Flex Gateway Policy Development Kit (PDK) Overview
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product: Omni Gateway Policy Development Kit (PDK)
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# Flex Gateway Policy Development Kit (PDK) Overview

> For the full documentation index, see: https://docs.mulesoft.com/llms.txt

Policies enforce regulations to help manage security, control traffic, and improve API adoption.
Flex Gateway provides many [included policies](https://docs.mulesoft.com/gateway/latest/policies-included-directory),
but they might not cover all your specific business needs.

Flex Gateway Policy Development Kit (PDK) is a software development kit that enables you to develop
custom policies with ease.

PDK provides instructions to guide you through the policy development lifecycle, from implementing
your Rust source code to releasing your policy on Exchange. Like included policies, you can apply
custom policies to Flex Gateway running in Connected Mode by using API Manager or to Flex Gateway
running in Local Mode by using YAML configuration files.

PDK provides [example policies](https://docs.mulesoft.com/pdk/latest/policies-pdk-policy-templates) to help you get started
with policy development and the
[MuleSoft MCP Server Policy Management Tools](https://docs.mulesoft.com/mulesoft-mcp-server/reference-mcp-tools#policy-management)
to help manage the custom policy lifecycle.

Watch the PDK Product Spotlight video to see a quick overview of PDK.

![](https://play.vidyard.com/ibt7HZ8SByp9VCn88dNPx7.jpg)

## See Also

- [Review the architecture](https://docs.mulesoft.com/pdk/1.6/policies-pdk-architecture)

- [Review the prerequisites](https://docs.mulesoft.com/pdk/1.6/policies-pdk-prerequisites)