api-design-patterns

REST API design relies on resource-oriented URIs, proper HTTP method semantics, appropriate status codes, and schema validation. This Skill consolidates patterns for authentication, error handling, versioning, and rate limiting to create maintainable, secure endpoints that scale with your backend requirements.

REST uses resource-oriented URIs and HTTP verbs for operations; GraphQL uses schema-first queries for precise data fetching. This Skill covers design principles, authentication, versioning, and error handling for both paradigms so you can choose the right approach for your use case.

OpenAPI specifications formalize REST API contracts through structured documentation. This Skill provides guidance on generating OpenAPI/Swagger docs, establishing resource and status-code conventions, and implementing deprecation policies to maintain API consistency across versions.

API versioning strategies, authentication mechanisms, and rate-limiting rules must align with your resource design. This Skill covers patterns for all three—including deprecation workflows—to ensure secure, predictable scaling as your API evolves.

Yes. This Skill applies to designing new REST or GraphQL APIs, refactoring existing endpoints, establishing organizational standards, and reviewing specifications. Patterns cover resource conventions, HTTP semantics, schema validation, and error handling across both scenarios.

Pagination strategies and monitoring enable APIs to handle scale. This Skill addresses pagination design patterns, rate-limiting mechanisms, error-handling conventions, and monitoring approaches to ensure your API remains responsive and observable under load.