api-validation

A set of rules for checking API requests, which are messages sent to a web service, and formatting errors consistently. It uses Zod schemas, rate limits for public endpoints, and a reference validation pattern.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when adding or reviewing API endpoints, defining request fields, validating user data, and standardizing error responses.
Why use it?
It helps prevent invalid data from reaching your application and gives clients predictable error messages. It also supports request tracing with an ID.

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/popoloni/non_deterministic_sw_eng/api-validation
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/popoloni/non_deterministic_sw_eng
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 284 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 $0.00284
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00142
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00057
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00028

Measured 2d ago against content hash 39e8f234e42f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-validation 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 2d 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.

04-context-engineering/cursor-rules/api-validation.mdc · 55 lines

What it actually says

API Validation Guidelines

When working with API endpoints:

  • Use zod schemas for all request validation
  • Return standardized error responses
  • Include rate limiting on public endpoints

Request Validation Pattern

import { z } from 'zod';
import { validateRequest } from '@/middleware/validation';

const createUserSchema = z.object({
  body: z.object({
    email: z.string().email(),
    name: z.string().min(1).max(100),
    role: z.enum(['user', 'admin']).default('user'),
  }),
});

router.post('/users', 
  validateRequest(createUserSchema),
  async (req, res) => {
    // req.body is now typed and validated
  }
);

Error Response Format

// All errors should use this format
interface ErrorResponse {
  error: {
    code: string;        // Machine-readable code
    message: string;     // Human-readable message
    details?: unknown;   // Optional validation details
  };
  requestId: string;     // For tracing
}

Reference Implementation

See @src/api/users/validation.ts for the canonical pattern.

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. 2d ago First seen · 55 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 39e8f234e42f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-validation is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository popoloni/non_deterministic_sw_eng (6 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 284 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.