api-integration

A guide for connecting an application to external APIs, which are interfaces that let software exchange data and perform actions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to build typed clients for REST, GraphQL, or OpenAPI services, handle credentials and failures, and choose between a wrapper, service class, or generated client.
Why use it?
It helps keep requests, authentication, response types, errors, and retries consistent instead of scattering them through application code.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the pokayokay plugin — 17 skills, 23 commands, 14 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server 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/srstomp/pokayokay/api-integration
Any agent
npx skills add srstomp/pokayokay --skill api-integration
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/srstomp/pokayokay

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install pokayokay, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 23 commands, 14 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server.

Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 736 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 $0.00050 $0.00736
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.00368
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00147
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00074

Measured 2d ago against content hash b142aad6afb8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

api-integration 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.

plugins/pokayokay/skills/api-integration/SKILL.md · 50 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Integration

Build robust, type-safe API clients from specs and documentation.

Key Principles

  • Type everything — Runtime-validated types for all requests and responses
  • Fail explicitly — No silent failures; throw typed errors with context
  • Auth is first-class — Handle auth in the client layer, not scattered in calls
  • Retry intelligently — Only idempotent methods, only transient failures, with backoff
  • Isolate the boundary — Transform API shapes at the integration layer, not in app code

When NOT to Use

  • Designing your own APIs — Use api-design for building endpoints others will consume
  • Writing API test suites — Use testing-strategy for test architecture, contract tests, mocking
  • Building SDKs for your API — Use sdk-development for packaging your own API as a client library

Quick Start Checklist

  1. Obtain API credentials and locate documentation (spec, docs, or examples)
  2. Analyze inputs: extract base URL, auth scheme, endpoints, error formats
  3. Choose architecture: typed wrapper (1-5 endpoints), service class (5-20), or generated client (20+)
  4. Implement types, client, auth handling, and error classification
  5. Add retry logic for transient failures and rate limit handling
  6. Write tests with mocked responses and error scenarios

References

Reference Description
openapi-specs-types.md Parsing OpenAPI specs, type generation strategies
openapi-patterns-codegen.md Common patterns, client generation, GraphQL, informal docs
client-base-service-layer.md Base client, interceptors, service layer pattern
client-request-response-caching.md Request config, response parsing, caching, logging
error-classification.md Error type hierarchy, classification, response conversion
error-retry-circuit-breaker.md Retry with backoff, rate limits, circuit breaker
error-fallback-patterns.md Fallback strategies, Result type, error boundaries, reporting
auth-api-keys-bearer.md API key and bearer token authentication
auth-oauth2.md OAuth 2.0 authorization code, PKCE, client credentials
auth-jwt-hmac-storage.md JWT handling, HMAC signatures, secure token storage
testing-mocking-fixtures.md HTTP mocking (MSW, Nock), test fixtures
testing-unit-integration.md Unit tests for transformers, integration tests for services
testing-contract-e2e-config.md Contract testing, E2E tests, Jest configuration

Read the full file on GitHub · 50 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 · 50 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A b142aad6afb8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-integration is a skill published in the GitHub repository srstomp/pokayokay (9 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 736 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens

chat-perf

Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.

microsoft/vscode · 51 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens