api-design

A guide to designing HTTP and REST APIs, the web interfaces applications use to exchange data. It covers routes, requests, responses, errors, pagination, versions, and request limits.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design or review endpoints, resource names, status codes, pagination, error formats, version changes, rate limits, idempotency, and OpenAPI specifications.
Why use it?
It helps keep an API predictable for clients and reduces breaking changes, confusing URLs, 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/kid-sid/codex-spellbook/api-design
Any agent
npx skills add kid-sid/codex-spellbook --skill api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kid-sid/codex-spellbook

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,212 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 $0.00045 $0.01212
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00606
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00242
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00121

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0fc2f2b41a8e, 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 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/api-design/SKILL.md · 158 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 158 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Design

Design resource-oriented HTTP APIs with stable contracts, predictable errors, and explicit pagination and versioning choices.

When to Activate

  • Design a new HTTP or REST endpoint
  • Review existing route naming or handler contracts
  • Choose between offset and cursor pagination
  • Define status codes and error payloads
  • Introduce a breaking API change
  • Add rate limiting or idempotency behavior
  • Generate or review an OpenAPI spec

Resource Design

Concern Preferred Avoid
Collections /users /getUsers
Single resource /users/{user_id} /user?id=123
Nested resource /users/{user_id}/tokens /userTokens/{user_id}
Actions /jobs/{job_id}:cancel when no resource exists /cancelJob/{job_id}

Rules:

  • Use plural nouns for collections.
  • Use kebab-case for multi-word path segments.
  • Put identifiers in the path and filters in the query string.
  • Model actions as resources first; use action suffixes only when CRUD does not fit.

BAD

GET /getUserOrders?userId=42&limit=5000

GOOD

GET /users/42/orders?limit=100&cursor=eyJpZCI6Im9yZF8xIn0=

HTTP Semantics

Method Use When Idempotent Response
GET Read resources Yes 200, 206, 304
POST Create resource or submit command No 201, 202
PUT Replace full resource Yes 200, 204
PATCH Partial update Usually 200, 204
DELETE Remove resource Yes 204
Situation Code Notes
Created synchronously 201 Created Return Location header
Accepted async work 202 Accepted Return job resource
Validation failure 400 Bad Request or 422 Unprocessable Entity Match validator semantics
Authentication missing 401 Unauthorized Include auth challenge when applicable
Permission denied 403 Forbidden Caller is authenticated
Missing resource 404 Not Found Do not leak existence across tenants
Version conflict 409 Conflict ETag or business conflict
Rate limited 429 Too Many Requests Include reset headers

Read the full file on GitHub · 158 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. 2d ago First seen · 158 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 0fc2f2b41a8e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository kid-sid/codex-spellbook (21 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 1,212 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.

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