api-designer

api-designer is a skill for Claude Code from nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog. It costs 68 tokens per session (817 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for designing REST APIs, which are web interfaces that let programs exchange data. It covers endpoint names, versioning, pagination, status codes, errors, and OpenAPI documentation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when planning endpoints, choosing URL structures, adding API versions, designing list pagination, defining status codes, or writing Swagger/OpenAPI specifications.
Why use it?
It helps keep an API predictable for the people and software that use it. It reduces inconsistent URLs, response formats, and error handling.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it reads a path above its own folder, which exists only inside the repository. The line is Human-readable explanation: see [docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md](../../../docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md).

Part of the aura-frog plugin — 43 skills, 24 commands, 15 agents, 10 hooks, 6 MCP servers shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/api-designer

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install aura-frog, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 43 skills, 24 commands, 15 agents, 10 hooks, 6 MCP servers.

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-designer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/api-designer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/api-designer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/api-designer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog/api-designer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 817 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 5.1 $0.00068 $0.00817
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00409
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00163
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00082

Measured 6d ago against content hash b973b278e786, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-designer 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 6d 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.

aura-frog/skills/api-designer/SKILL.md · 105 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 105 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AI-consumed reference. Optimized for Claude to read during execution. Human-readable explanation: see docs/architecture/HIERARCHICAL_PLANNING.md or docs/getting-started/ depending on topic.

Skill: API Designer

Design consistent, RESTful APIs with versioning, documentation, and error handling.


RESTful Conventions

Method Endpoint Purpose Response
GET /users List 200 + array
GET /users/:id Get one 200 / 404
POST /users Create 201 + created
PUT /users/:id Replace 200 / 404
PATCH /users/:id Update 200 / 404
DELETE /users/:id Delete 204 / 404

Nested: GET /users/:userId/orders


Naming

  • Resources: plural nouns (/users, /orders)
  • Query params: snake_case (page_size)
  • Request/Response bodies: camelCase

Versioning: URL path /api/v1/... (recommended).


Response Format

Success: { "data": {...}, "meta": {...} } List: Add meta: { page, pageSize, total, totalPages } Error: { "error": { "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR", "message": "...", "fields": {...} } }


Status Codes

Code When
200 Successful GET/PUT/PATCH
201 Successful POST
204 Successful DELETE
400/422 Invalid input / validation
401/403 No auth / no permission
404/409 Not found / conflict
429 Rate limited
500 Unexpected error

Pagination

Offset: ?page=2&page_size=20 (simple, slow on large sets) Cursor: ?cursor=abc&limit=20 (consistent, fast, no page jump)


Filtering & Sorting

GET /users?status=active&sort=created_at:desc&q=john&page=1&page_size=20

Design Workflow

  1. Define resources and relationships → 2. Choose versioning strategy → 3. Define endpoints with RESTful naming → 4. Specify response/error schemas → 5. Add pagination, filtering, sorting → 6. Document with OpenAPI → 7. Add rate limiting headers

Read the full file on GitHub · 105 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. 6d ago First seen · 105 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A b973b278e786

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-designer is a skill published in the GitHub repository nguyenthienthanh/aura-frog (24 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 817 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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