api-design

api-design is a cursor rule for coding agents from adonai-labs/agent-runway. It costs 0 tokens per session (1,836 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Rules for designing and reviewing web APIs, the interfaces that let software exchange data. They cover REST, GraphQL, versioning, pagination, errors, documentation, security, caching, and testing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing or reviewing API endpoints, including their data format, errors, authentication, caching, documentation, and tests.
Why use it?
It gives consistent choices for URLs, HTTP methods, response codes, errors, and other details that otherwise make APIs difficult to use or maintain.

Cursor rule

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/adonai-labs/agent-runway/api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/adonai-labs/agent-runway

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for api-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/adonai-labs/agent-runway/api-design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/adonai-labs/agent-runway/api-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/adonai-labs/agent-runway/api-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/adonai-labs/agent-runway/api-design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 1,836 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00000 $0.01836
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00918
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00367
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00184

Measured 3d ago against content hash f63d6597c3d6, 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 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 3d ago.

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.

src/core/rules/api-design.mdc · 189 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 189 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design Guidelines

Directives for designing and reviewing APIs. For detailed security patterns, defer to security.mdc and engineering-security.mdc.


REST Principles

Resource-based URLs

  • Use nouns, not verbs: /api/users, /api/orders — not /api/getUsers or /api/createOrder
  • Use plural nouns for collections: /api/users — not /api/user
  • Nest resources only when there is a true parent-child relationship: /api/users/123/posts
  • Avoid query params for resource identity: prefer /api/users/123 over /api/user?id=123

HTTP Methods and Status Codes

Method Use for Success
GET Read (idempotent) 200 OK
POST Create 201 Created
PUT Full replace 200 OK
PATCH Partial update 200 OK
DELETE Remove 204 No Content
Status Use when
200 Success with body
201 Created; include Location header
204 Success, no body
400 Validation error, bad request
401 Unauthenticated
403 Unauthorised (authenticated but forbidden)
404 Resource not found
409 Conflict (e.g. duplicate)
429 Rate limit exceeded
500 Internal server error

Request/Response Models

  • Define explicit DTOs for request bodies; do not accept raw any or untyped objects
  • Use separate DTOs for create vs update (create: required fields; update: optional fields)
  • Wrap success responses in a consistent envelope; use a standard error envelope
  • Exclude internal fields (e.g. passwordHash) from response DTOs
  • Use ISO 8601 for dates in JSON

Success envelope: { data: T, message?: string, timestamp: string }

Error envelope: { error: { code: string, message: string, details?: object }, timestamp: string }


Versioning Strategies

Strategy When to use Example
URL Public APIs, breaking changes /api/v1/users, /api/v2/users
Header Content negotiation, same URL Accept: application/vnd.company.api-v1+json
Query Internal APIs, optional version /api/users?version=1

Read the full file on GitHub · 189 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. 3d ago First seen · 189 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A f63d6597c3d6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository adonai-labs/agent-runway (2 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,836 tokens. 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.