rails-api-patterns

A guide to building JSON APIs with Ruby on Rails. An API is an interface that lets other software communicate with an application, and this guide covers endpoints, authentication, response formats, versions, pagination, and errors.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating API endpoints, JWT login, URL versions such as /api/v1/, serializers, pagination, rate limits, or shared API error handling.
Why use it?
It helps make API behavior consistent and easier for client applications to use. It also addresses common problems such as unclear responses, weak authentication, unbounded result lists, and inconsistent error handling.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/ag0os/rails-dev-plugin/rails-api-patterns
Any agent
npx skills add ag0os/rails-dev-plugin --skill rails-api-patterns
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ag0os/rails-dev-plugin

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 73 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 833 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 $0.00073 $0.00833
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00417
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00167
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00083

Measured 2d ago against content hash 73c3074f55a7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rails-api-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 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.

skills/rails-api-patterns/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Rails API Patterns

Analyze and recommend best practices for Rails API design including controllers, serialization, authentication, versioning, and error handling.

Applies on the api delivery axis (Axis B, rails-stack-profiles) — including an /api namespace inside an otherwise html app. For server-rendered HTML use rails-views-patterns and hotwire-patterns.

Follow standard Rails API controller conventions (ActionController::API, strong parameters, rescue_from). See patterns.md for opinionated decisions and configuration.

Quick Reference

Area Decision Key File
Base controller ActionController::API + shared concerns app/controllers/api/base_controller.rb
Versioning URL namespace (/api/v1/) -- NOT header-based config/routes.rb
Auth JWT bearer token via JwtService app/controllers/concerns/authenticatable.rb
Serialization Blueprinter preferred (views for complexity) app/blueprints/
Response format { data:, meta:, errors: } envelope always All API responses
Pagination Pagy or Kaminari + max_per_page: 100 cap app/controllers/concerns/paginatable.rb
Rate limiting Rack::Attack: 100/min per token, 20/min per IP config/initializers/rack_attack.rb
CORS rack-cors gem, env-driven origins config/initializers/cors.rb

Core Decisions

  1. Response envelope always -- every response wraps in { data:, meta:, errors: }, never bare objects/arrays
  2. URL versioning from day one -- /api/v1/ namespace even for first version; header-based versioning adds complexity without benefit for most apps
  3. Blueprinter over AMS -- ActiveModel::Serializer is unmaintained; prefer Blueprinter for views-based serialization, or Jbuilder for complex one-offs
  4. Cap per_page at 100 -- enforce [params[:per_page].to_i, 100].min to prevent clients from requesting unbounded results
  5. Authenticate in base, skip explicitly -- before_action :authenticate in Api::BaseController, use skip_before_action for public endpoints
  6. Dual rate limits -- per-token (100/min) for authenticated, per-IP (20/min) for unauthenticated; return Retry-After header

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 2d ago First seen · 61 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A 73c3074f55a7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rails-api-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository ag0os/rails-dev-plugin (5 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 833 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.

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