designing-apis

designing-apis is a skill for Claude Code from ancoleman/ai-design-components. It costs 45 tokens per session (2,554 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to designing REST, GraphQL, and event-driven APIs. APIs are interfaces that let software systems exchange data and actions; the guide covers structure, versioning, errors, pagination, limits, and security.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design a new API, set team standards, plan authentication or version changes, and create OpenAPI or AsyncAPI specifications.
Why use it?
It helps teams make API decisions consistent and reduces problems when APIs change or handle many requests.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the developer-productivity-skills plugin — 7 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to design a new API, set team standards, plan authentication or version changes, and create OpenAPI or AsyncAPI specifications.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis
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 ancoleman/ai-design-components --skill designing-apis
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ancoleman/ai-design-components

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install developer-productivity-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills.

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 designing-apis

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis/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 designing-apis

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ancoleman/ai-design-components/designing-apis.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,554 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.
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 $0.00045 $0.02554
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.01277
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00511
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00255

Measured 9d ago against content hash 8474e7e1d019, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

designing-apis 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 9d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/validate-openapi.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/designing-apis/SKILL.md · 402 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 402 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Designing APIs

Design well-structured, scalable APIs using REST, GraphQL, or event-driven patterns. Focus on resource design, versioning, error handling, pagination, rate limiting, and security.

When to Use This Skill

Use when:

  • Designing a new REST, GraphQL, or event-driven API
  • Establishing API design standards for a team or organization
  • Choosing between REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, or message queues
  • Planning API versioning and breaking change management
  • Defining error response formats and HTTP status code usage
  • Implementing pagination, filtering, and rate limiting patterns
  • Designing OAuth2 flows or API key authentication
  • Creating OpenAPI or AsyncAPI specifications

Do NOT use for:

  • Implementation code (use api-patterns skill for Express, FastAPI code)
  • Authentication implementation (use auth-security skill for JWT, sessions)
  • API testing strategies (use testing-strategies skill)
  • API deployment and infrastructure (use deploying-applications skill)

Core Design Principles

Resource-Oriented Design (REST)

Use nouns for resources, not verbs in URLs:

✓ GET    /users              List users
✓ GET    /users/123          Get user 123
✓ POST   /users              Create user
✓ PATCH  /users/123          Update user 123
✓ DELETE /users/123          Delete user 123

✗ GET    /getUsers
✗ POST   /createUser

Nest resources for relationships (limit depth to 2-3 levels):

✓ GET /users/123/posts
✓ GET /users/123/posts/456/comments
✗ GET /users/123/posts/456/comments/789/replies  (too deep)

For complete REST patterns, see references/rest-design.md

HTTP Method Semantics

Method Idempotent Safe Use For Success Status
GET Yes Yes Read resource 200 OK
POST No No Create resource 201 Created
PUT Yes No Replace entire resource 200 OK, 204 No Content
PATCH No No Update specific fields 200 OK, 204 No Content
DELETE Yes No Remove resource 204 No Content, 200 OK

Read the full file on GitHub · 402 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. 9d ago First seen · 402 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 8474e7e1d019

Subscribe to this mod's changes

designing-apis is a skill published in the GitHub repository ancoleman/ai-design-components (519 stars, last pushed 9mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 2,554 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

form-strategy

Design forms that convert, validate well, resist spam, and integrate cleanly with downstream systems. Use this skill when designing or auditing any form (contact, signup, checkout, multi-step, embedded), planning validation logic, fighting spam, choosing form tooling, or improving form conversion. Triggers on form…

rampstackco/claude-skills · 107 tokens

tanstack-start

Build a full-stack TanStack Start app on Cloudflare Workers from scratch — SSR, file-based routing, server functions, D1+Drizzle, better-auth, Tailwind v4+shadcn/ui. Use whenever the user mentions TanStack Start, asks to scaffold a full-stack Cloudflare app with SSR, wants an SSR dashboard, or asks for a React 19 +…

jezweb/claude-skills · 115 tokens

mcp-builder

Build MCP servers in Python with FastMCP. Define tools / resources / prompts, build the server, test locally, deploy to FastMCP Cloud or Docker. Use whenever the user mentions building an MCP server, exposing tools to LLMs, FastMCP, building a Claude integration, or troubleshooting FastMCP module-level server…

jezweb/claude-skills · 84 tokens

hono-api-scaffolder

Scaffold Hono API routes for Cloudflare Workers. Produces route files, middleware, typed bindings, Zod validation, error handling, and APIENDPOINTS.md documentation. Use after a project is set up with cloudflare-worker-builder or vite-flare-starter, when you need to add API routes, create endpoints, or generate API…

jezweb/claude-skills · 77 tokens

api-endpoint-scaffolder

Generate REST API endpoints with proper structure, validation, error handling, and types. Use when creating new API routes, endpoints, or backend services.

OneWave-AI/claude-skills · 36 tokens

cloudflare-worker-builder

Scaffold and deploy Cloudflare Workers with Hono routing, Vite plugin, and Static Assets. Describe project, scaffold structure, configure bindings, deploy. Use whenever the user wants to create a Worker project, set up Hono on Cloudflare, configure D1 / R2 / KV / Queues bindings, or troubleshoot Worker export syntax…

jezweb/claude-skills · 86 tokens