api-design-implementation

A set of guidelines for designing application programming interfaces (APIs) and the data models behind them. APIs are the interfaces through which software reads and changes data.

In plain words
What is it for?
Planning new endpoints, choosing fields and storage structures, defining filtering, sorting, and pagination needs, and implementing the design in stages.
Why use it?
It keeps endpoint and database decisions tied to real use cases, such as where data appears, how it is searched, and how often it is read or changed.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/adobe/spacecat-api-service/api-design-implementation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/adobe/spacecat-api-service

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 869 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 869 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00869 $0.00869
Opus 5 $0.00434 $0.00434
Sonnet 5 $0.00174 $0.00174
Haiku 4.5 $0.00087 $0.00087

Measured yesterday against content hash abfc625a78cc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-design-implementation scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/api-design-implementation.mdc · 105 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 105 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design and Data Modeling Principles

Core Principles

  • API design and implementation starts with understanding both the business use cases and the non-functional requirements, and not directly with implementation.
  • Data access patterns should be derived from the business use cases.
  • The data models, storage implementation and API endpoints should be informed by and implemented starting from the required data access patterns and the non-functional requirements relevant to the use case.
  • Implementation should be done incrementally.

When Planning or Implementing New API Endpoints

1. Clarification Phase - Ask These Questions First

Before planning implementation, systematically gather requirements:

Data Access Patterns:

  • Where will this data surface? (internal UI, customer-facing UI, internal services, external services, etc.)
  • What query patterns are required? (filtering, sorting, pagination)
  • Read vs write frequency and volume?
  • Will users need to filter or sort by already known, common root-level fields and simple conditions?
  • Will users need to filter or sort by deeply nested, complex field values and conditions?

Data Model:

  • What kind of data needs to be surfaced for the use case?
  • What type of data: simple fields or complex nested structures?
  • How large will the data be? (impacts bandwidth)
  • Who can read/write different parts of the data? (access control needs)
  • How often will different parts be updated? (concurrent update patterns)
  • Will all records have this data or only a subset of the data?
  • Are some subsets of the data used and retrieved only for some specific use cases?

Scale and Performance:

  • Expected record count and growth rate?
  • List operation payload size concerns? (especially mobile)
  • Can we use projection to exclude heavy fields?
  • Is progressive/lazy loading needed?
  • Are counts of all/filtered records required to be surfaced together with the paged query results?

Always ask for clarification if:

  • Business use cases are not provided, e.g. "Implement a CRUD API for URLs", "Implement a CRUD API for configurations"
  • Requirements include "filter/sort by any field", "sort by a single field required by only one of the use cases" (may need different approach)
  • Data has vague or only implied requirements, e.g.
    • is mostly free-form with no details regarding which fields are used when and where
    • all data fields are always needed with every query (consider single entity)
    • all data fields are rarely needed (definitely separate)
  • Multiple services update same fields concurrently (coordination strategy needed)
  • Different access control for different parts of data (separate entities)

Read the full file on GitHub · 105 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 105 lines · 869 tokens per session scan A abfc625a78cc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design-implementation is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository adobe/spacecat-api-service (10 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 869 tokens to every session, about $0.0043 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.