api-design

api-design is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit. It costs 37 tokens per session (495 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A planning guide for designing REST or GraphQL API contracts before implementation. REST and GraphQL are two ways for software to expose data and operations through an API.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reading existing endpoints, designing new endpoints, checking callers before changes, and planning a v1-to-v2 transition. It also covers deprecation headers, migration documentation, OpenAPI updates, and regenerated types.
Why use it?
It helps teams agree on routes, requests, responses, errors, authentication, and status codes before code is written, and prevents breaking existing users during version changes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the senior-dev-kit plugin — 25 skills, 6 commands, 9 agents, 1 hook shipped together

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/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/api-design
Any agent
npx skills add mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit --skill api-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install senior-dev-kit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 25 skills, 6 commands, 9 agents, 1 hook.

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 api-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/api-design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/api-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/api-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/api-design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 495 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 $0.00037 $0.00495
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00247
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00099
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00049

Measured 3d ago against content hash 5fec7694c0a1, 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.

skills/api-design/SKILL.md · 32 lines

What it actually says

api-design

Design the API contract. No implementation — wait for confirmation before coding.

  1. Read 1-2 existing endpoints. Extract URL pattern, response envelope, error shape, auth mechanism, status codes — match ALL in the new design.
  2. Changing an EXISTING endpoint → grep for callers first. Non-breaking → propose a backwards-compatible alternative. Breaking → version transition below.

Version transitions (breaking changes only)

Breaking = removed/renamed field, required field added, type/status-code/error-format/auth changed, endpoint removed. Non-breaking (no versioning): new optional field/param, new endpoint. Plan: current /api/v[N] → new /api/v[N+1], both live in parallel — never remove old behavior on deploy. Old version gets Deprecation + Sunset + Link headers; sunset ≥6 months after v[N+1] ships. Write docs/api-migration-vN-to-vN+1.md, update OpenAPI spec, regenerate types. Deep reference: agent_docs/api-versioning-guide.md — parallel routing code, deprecation headers, migration guide template, OpenAPI dual-version strategy.

Output

ENDPOINT: [METHOD] [/path/:param] | AUTH: [guard name | none | role:admin]
REQUEST: headers / params / body (with types) | RESPONSE 200/201: { field: type } ← match existing envelope
ERRORS: 400/401/403/404 — when each applies | IDEMPOTENCY: [required|not] | RATE LIMIT: [required|not]
BREAKING CHANGE RISK: [none|low|HIGH→mitigation] | OPEN QUESTIONS: [none|must-answer]

Every mutating endpoint needs auth. Sensitive endpoints must be rate-limited. Never implement — wait for "go".

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 · 32 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 5fec7694c0a1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit (5 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 495 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 2026-08-31.

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