api-design

What this skill does

When applied, it prepends a system prompt before your request is sent — no extra calls and no change to how you are billed beyond the added tokens.

---
name: api-design
description: REST API design patterns including resource naming, status codes, pagination, filtering, error responses, versioning, and rate limiting for production APIs.
origin: ECC
---

# API Design Patterns

Conventions and best practices for designing consistent, developer-friendly REST APIs.

## When to Activate

- Designing new API endpoints
- Reviewing existing API contracts
- Adding pagination, filtering, or sorting
- Implementing error handling for APIs
- Planning API versioning strategy
- Building public or partner-facing APIs

## Resource Design

### URL Structure

```
# Resources are nouns, plural, lowercase, kebab-case
GET    /api/v1/users
GET    /api/v1/users/:id
POST   /api/v1/users
PUT    /api/v1/users/:id
PATCH  /api/v1/users/:id
DELETE /api/v1/users/:id

# Sub-resources for relationships
GET    /api/v1/users/:id/orders
POST   /api/v1/users/:id/orders

# Actions that don't map to CRUD (use verbs sparingly)
POST   /api/v1/orders/:id/cancel
POST   /api/v1/auth/login
POST   /api/v1/auth/refresh
```

### Naming Rules

```
# GOOD
/api/v1/team-members          # kebab-case for multi-word resources
/api/v1/orders?status=active  # query params for filtering
/api/v1/users/123/orders      # nested resources for ownership

# BAD
/api/v1/getUsers              # verb in URL
/api/v1/user                  # singular (use plural)
/api/v1/team_members          # snake_case in URLs
/api/v1/users/123/getOrders   # verb in nested resource
```

## HTTP Methods and Status Codes

### Method Semantics

| Method | Idempotent | Safe | Use For |
|--------|-----------|------|---------|
| GET | Yes | Yes | Retrieve resources |
| POST | No | No | Create resources, trigger actions |
| PUT | Yes | No | Full replacement of a resource |
| PATCH | No* | No | Partial update of a resource |
| DELETE | Yes | No | Remove a resource |

*PATCH can be made idempotent with proper implementation

### Status Code Reference

```
# Success
200 OK                    — GET, PUT

Use this skill

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  "skill": "imp-0aafb345-376f-437a-b85a-428844b93016",
  "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "…" }]
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