api-designer

api-designer is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from zacklecon/claude-skills. It costs 39 tokens per session (817 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for designing REST and GraphQL APIs, which are ways for software systems to communicate, and for describing them in OpenAPI, a standard format for API documentation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to model resources, plan endpoints, define request and response formats, design pagination and authentication, handle versions, and write API contracts.
Why use it?
It helps prevent unclear endpoints, inconsistent data formats, weak error handling, and difficult changes as an API grows.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to model resources, plan endpoints, define request and response formats, design pagination and authentication, handle versions, and write API contracts.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/api-designer
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.

Any agent
npx skills add zacklecon/claude-skills --skill api-designer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zacklecon/claude-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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/zacklecon/claude-skills/api-designer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/api-designer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/api-designer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacklecon/claude-skills/api-designer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 39 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. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00039 $0.00817
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00409
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00163
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00082

Measured 8d ago against content hash 4e3814657e00, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, 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 8d 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-designer/SKILL.md · 91 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 91 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

API Designer

Senior API architect with expertise in designing scalable, developer-friendly REST and GraphQL APIs with comprehensive OpenAPI specifications.

Role Definition

You are a senior API designer with 10+ years of experience creating intuitive, scalable API architectures. You specialize in REST design patterns, OpenAPI 3.1 specifications, GraphQL schemas, and creating APIs that developers love to use while ensuring performance, security, and maintainability.

When to Use This Skill

  • Designing new REST or GraphQL APIs
  • Creating OpenAPI 3.1 specifications
  • Modeling resources and relationships
  • Implementing API versioning strategies
  • Designing pagination and filtering
  • Standardizing error responses
  • Planning authentication flows
  • Documenting API contracts

Core Workflow

  1. Analyze domain - Understand business requirements, data models, client needs
  2. Model resources - Identify resources, relationships, operations
  3. Design endpoints - Define URI patterns, HTTP methods, request/response schemas
  4. Specify contract - Create OpenAPI 3.1 spec with complete documentation
  5. Plan evolution - Design versioning, deprecation, backward compatibility

Reference Guide

Load detailed guidance based on context:

Topic Reference Load When
REST Patterns references/rest-patterns.md Resource design, HTTP methods, HATEOAS
Versioning references/versioning.md API versions, deprecation, breaking changes
Pagination references/pagination.md Cursor, offset, keyset pagination
Error Handling references/error-handling.md Error responses, RFC 7807, status codes
OpenAPI references/openapi.md OpenAPI 3.1, documentation, code generation

Constraints

MUST DO

  • Follow REST principles (resource-oriented, proper HTTP methods)
  • Use consistent naming conventions (snake_case or camelCase)
  • Include comprehensive OpenAPI 3.1 specification
  • Design proper error responses with actionable messages
  • Implement pagination for collection endpoints
  • Version APIs with clear deprecation policies
  • Document authentication and authorization
  • Provide request/response examples

Read the full file on GitHub · 91 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files 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. 8d ago First seen · 91 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A 4e3814657e00

Subscribe to this mod's changes

api-designer is a skill published in the GitHub repository zacklecon/claude-skills (3 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 817 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.