contract-handshake-and-freeze

To freeze API contracts, you define endpoints, schemas, and auth requirements in a shared artifact, track the state in HANDOFF.md, and emit a freeze signal to lock expectations for parallel frontend and backend work.

Cross-layer contract governance explicitly defines and tracks API endpoints, request/response shapes, and invariants between frontend and backend teams to prevent drift, late changes, and misinterpretations during feature integration.

You track API contract lifecycle states by recording the current status—draft, changing, or frozen—in docs/team/HANDOFF.md and referencing authoritative docs to maintain shared expectations across teams.

You need to define explicit contracts for data shape evolution when multiple teams integrate features, ensuring documented request/response schemas, auth behaviors, and error invariants are established before implementation begins.

Yes, cross-layer contract governance is designed for multi-team projects, applying to API changes, data shape evolution, and authentication behavior to ensure documented endpoints and stable invariants across teams.

Frontend and backend integration suffers from contract drift when shared expectations are implicit, which this Skill prevents by capturing endpoints, schemas, and auth requirements in an explicit artifact before implementation.