api-design

api-design is a cursor rule for coding agents from mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools. It costs 22 tokens per session (426 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Rules for designing APIs, the interfaces through which software systems exchange requests and data. They cover versioning, list pagination, error responses, and idempotency, which means safely repeating an operation without changing its result.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when adding endpoints, changing response formats, versioning an API, paginating lists, defining consistent errors, or making write operations safe to retry.
Why use it?
They help prevent breaking clients and make API behavior predictable when data grows, requests fail, or the API changes.

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/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools/api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools

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/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools/api-design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools/api-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools/api-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools/api-design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 426 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 $0.00022 $0.00426
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00213
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00085
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00043

Measured 4d ago against content hash 3d4c84580e2c, 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 4d 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.

rules/api-design.mdc · 48 lines

What it actually says

API design

Applies when designing or changing an API (REST, RPC, GraphQL). Load for new endpoints, version bumps, breaking changes. Not every chat.

Versioning

  • Version explicitly and early. /v1/... in the path, or a header — pick one and be consistent across the API.
  • A breaking change bumps the major version; it does not silently change a v1 response shape.
  • Deprecate, don't delete: mark the old version deprecated, set a sunset date, document the migration.

Pagination

  • Paginate every list endpoint. Default page size; max page size enforced.
  • Prefer cursor over offset for large / mutable tables (offset skips rows when data shifts).
  • Return pagination metadata in a stable shape (next_cursor, has_more).

Error shape

  • One consistent error shape across the API: code, message, optional details. HTTP status matches the semantics (4xx client, 5xx server).
  • Errors are machine-readable: a stable code, not a free-text message.
  • 404 for "doesn't exist"; 401 for "who are you"; 403 for "you can't"; 409 for "already exists / conflict". Don't overload 400 for everything.

Idempotency

  • GET, HEAD, OPTIONS are safe. PUT, DELETE are idempotent.
  • POST that creates / charges / sends is made idempotent via an idempotency key (Idempotency-Key header) — duplicate retries must not double-charge.

Do not

  • Change a response shape without a version bump.
  • Return a 200 with an error body. Status must match the body.
  • Leak internal stack traces or IDs in error responses.
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. 4d ago First seen · 48 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 3d4c84580e2c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository mhmdreza-rafiei/agent-tools (5 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 426 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.