api-design

Guidance for designing and reviewing REST and GraphQL APIs, which let software systems exchange data through defined requests and responses.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when creating, changing, deprecating, or testing API endpoints and their contracts.
Why use it?
It provides consistent rules for endpoint names, HTTP methods, success codes, and error responses when an API changes.

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/kbwen/agentic-os/api-design
Any agent
npx skills add KbWen/agentic-os --skill api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/KbWen/agentic-os

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,023 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 $0.00017 $0.01023
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00511
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00205
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00102

Measured 3d ago against content hash 3bb02b810098, 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 3d 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:

.agents/skills/api-design/SKILL.md · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design

When to Apply

  • Classification: feature, architecture-change, hotfix (if touching API endpoints)
  • Phase: /implement (design & build), /review (compliance check), /test (contract verification)
  • Trigger: Task involves creating, modifying, or deprecating API endpoints

Conventions

Customize after /app-init: Replace these generic conventions with your project's ADR decisions.

Endpoint Naming

  • Use nouns for resources, not verbs: GET /users not GET /getUsers
  • Plural resource names: /users, /orders, /products
  • Nested resources for relationships: /users/:id/orders
  • Use kebab-case for multi-word paths: /order-items

HTTP Methods

Action Method Success Status Idempotent
List GET 200 Yes
Get one GET 200 Yes
Create POST 201 No
Full update PUT 200 Yes
Partial update PATCH 200 No
Delete DELETE 204 Yes

Error Response Format

{
  "error": {
    "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR",
    "message": "Email is required",
    "details": {
      "field": "email",
      "constraint": "required"
    }
  }
}

Standard Error Codes

HTTP Status When Error Code Pattern
400 Invalid input VALIDATION_ERROR, INVALID_FORMAT
401 Not authenticated UNAUTHORIZED
403 Not permitted FORBIDDEN
404 Resource not found NOT_FOUND
409 Conflict (duplicate) CONFLICT, DUPLICATE
422 Business rule violation UNPROCESSABLE
429 Rate limited RATE_LIMITED
500 Server error INTERNAL_ERROR

Pagination

{
  "data": [...],
  "pagination": {
    "total": 100,
    "page": 1,
    "per_page": 20,
    "has_next": true
  }
}

Versioning

  • URL path versioning: /api/v1/users
  • Breaking changes require new version
  • Deprecation: add Sunset header with date, keep old version for N months

Input Validation

  • Validate at the controller/route level BEFORE business logic
  • Return ALL validation errors at once (batch), not one at a time
  • Sanitize strings: trim whitespace, escape HTML where applicable
  • Enforce max lengths on all string fields

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 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. 3d ago First seen · 127 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A 3bb02b810098

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository KbWen/agentic-os (149 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 1,023 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

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