api-design-patterns

api-design-patterns is a skill for Claude Code from aAAaqwq/AGI-Super-Team. It costs 29 tokens per session (5,848 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference guide for designing software APIs using REST, GraphQL, or gRPC. It covers common choices for how systems expose data and operations to other software.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when choosing an API style or planning naming, pagination, versioning, authentication, rate limits, idempotency, error handling, caching, and streaming.
Why use it?
It helps avoid inconsistent routes, unclear version changes, weak authentication, unsafe retries, and poorly handled limits or errors.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the agi-super-team plugin — 208 skills, 1 agent, 1 plugin shipped together

Good fit Use it when choosing an API style or planning naming, pagination, versioning, authentication, rate limits, idempotency, error handling, caching, and streaming.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns
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.

Any agent
npx skills add aAAaqwq/AGI-Super-Team --skill api-design-patterns
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aAAaqwq/AGI-Super-Team

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agi-super-team, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 208 skills, 1 agent, 1 plugin.

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-patterns

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for api-design-patterns

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aaaaqwq/agi-super-team/api-design-patterns.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 29 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,848 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 5 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Privilege Escalation · line 430
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 431
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Tool Misuse · line 144
    Tool parameters are crafted to achieve unintended or unsafe behavior. Parameter abuse can bypass intended safety checks (e.g. shell=True, --force, dangerous glob patterns).
    Fix: Validate all tool parameters against an allowlist. Reject dangerous parameter values (shell=True, --force, -rf /) and use safe defaults.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 195
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 856
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00029 $0.05848
Opus 5.5 $0.00012 $0.02339
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00006 $0.01170
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00585

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 1d89932bee15, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-design-patterns 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 1mo 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/api-design-patterns/SKILL.md · 888 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 888 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design Patterns

Design robust, scalable APIs using proven patterns for REST, GraphQL, and gRPC with proper versioning, authentication, and error handling.

Quick Reference

API Style Selection:

  • REST: Resource-based CRUD, simple clients, HTTP-native caching
  • GraphQL: Client-driven queries, complex data graphs, real-time subscriptions
  • gRPC: High-performance RPC, microservices, strong typing, streaming

Critical Patterns:

  • Versioning: URI (/v1/users), header (Accept: application/vnd.api+json;version=1), content negotiation
  • Pagination: Offset (simple), cursor (stable), keyset (performant)
  • Auth: OAuth2 (delegated), JWT (stateless), API keys (service-to-service)
  • Rate limiting: Token bucket, fixed window, sliding window
  • Idempotency: Idempotency keys, conditional requests, safe retry

See references/ for deep dives: rest-patterns.md, graphql-patterns.md, grpc-patterns.md, versioning-strategies.md, authentication.md

Core Principles

Universal API Design Standards

Apply these principles across all API styles:

1. Consistency Over Cleverness

  • Follow established conventions for your API style
  • Use predictable naming patterns (snake_case or camelCase, pick one)
  • Maintain consistent error response formats
  • Version breaking changes, never surprise clients

2. Design for Evolution

  • Plan for versioning from day one
  • Use optional fields with sensible defaults
  • Deprecate gracefully with sunset dates
  • Document breaking vs non-breaking changes

3. Security by Default

  • Require authentication unless explicitly public
  • Use HTTPS/TLS for all production endpoints
  • Implement rate limiting and throttling
  • Validate and sanitize all inputs
  • Return minimal error details to clients

4. Developer Experience First

  • Provide comprehensive documentation (OpenAPI, GraphQL schema)
  • Return meaningful error messages with actionable guidance
  • Use standard HTTP status codes correctly
  • Include request IDs for debugging
  • Offer SDKs and code generators

Read the full file on GitHub · 888 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 1mo ago First seen · 888 lines · 29 tokens per session scan A 1d89932bee15

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository aAAaqwq/AGI-Super-Team (109 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 29 tokens to every session and 5,848 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.

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