api-design

A set of patterns for designing consistent REST APIs, which are web interfaces that exchange data through URLs and HTTP requests. It covers names for resources, response codes, pagination, filtering, errors, versions, and rate limits.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when designing or reviewing endpoints, adding filtering or pagination, planning API versions, handling errors, or building public and partner APIs.
Why use it?
It helps prevent APIs from having inconsistent URLs, responses, and rules that make them harder for other developers to use.

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/junmystery/agent-guidance-python/api-design
Any agent
npx skills add JunMystery/Agent-Guidance-Python --skill api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JunMystery/Agent-Guidance-Python

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 31 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,325 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 95% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00031 $0.03325
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.01663
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00665
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00332

Measured yesterday against content hash ad7230f931b6, 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 yesterday.

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

This is a copy

95% identical to api-design — 4 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/api-design/SKILL.md · 525 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 525 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design Patterns

Conventions and best practices for designing consistent, developer-friendly REST APIs.

When to Activate

  • Designing new API endpoints
  • Reviewing existing API contracts
  • Adding pagination, filtering, or sorting
  • Implementing error handling for APIs
  • Planning API versioning strategy
  • Building public or partner-facing APIs

Resource Design

URL Structure

# Resources are nouns, plural, lowercase, kebab-case
GET    /api/v1/users
GET    /api/v1/users/:id
POST   /api/v1/users
PUT    /api/v1/users/:id
PATCH  /api/v1/users/:id
DELETE /api/v1/users/:id

# Sub-resources for relationships
GET    /api/v1/users/:id/orders
POST   /api/v1/users/:id/orders

# Actions that don't map to CRUD (use verbs sparingly)
POST   /api/v1/orders/:id/cancel
POST   /api/v1/auth/login
POST   /api/v1/auth/refresh

Naming Rules

# GOOD
/api/v1/team-members          # kebab-case for multi-word resources
/api/v1/orders?status=active  # query params for filtering
/api/v1/users/123/orders      # nested resources for ownership

# BAD
/api/v1/getUsers              # verb in URL
/api/v1/user                  # singular (use plural)
/api/v1/team_members          # snake_case in URLs
/api/v1/users/123/getOrders   # verb in nested resource

HTTP Methods and Status Codes

Method Semantics

Method Idempotent Safe Use For
GET Yes Yes Retrieve resources
POST No No Create resources, trigger actions
PUT Yes No Full replacement of a resource
PATCH No* No Partial update of a resource
DELETE Yes No Remove a resource

*PATCH can be made idempotent with proper implementation

Status Code Reference

# Success
200 OK                    — GET, PUT, PATCH (with response body)
201 Created               — POST (include Location header)
204 No Content            — DELETE, PUT (no response body)

# Client Errors
400 Bad Request           — Validation failure, malformed JSON
401 Unauthorized          — Missing or invalid authentication
403 Forbidden             — Authenticated but not authorized
404 Not Found             — Resource doesn't exist
409 Conflict              — Duplicate entry, state conflict
422 Unprocessable Entity  — Semantically invalid (valid JSON, bad data)
429 Too Many Requests     — Rate limit exceeded

# Server Errors
500 Internal Server Error — Unexpected failure (never expose details)
502 Bad Gateway           — Upstream service failed
503 Service Unavailable   — Temporary overload, include Retry-After

Read the full file on GitHub · 525 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. yesterday First seen · 525 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A ad7230f931b6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository JunMystery/Agent-Guidance-Python (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 3,325 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to api-design, differing in 4 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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