HTTP API#

Design and review HTTP-facing APIs (usually JSON): predictable URLs, honest status codes, and errors clients can build on— without duplicating everything your api-compat skill covers for long-lived versioning policy.

Scope#

• Modeling: nouns/resources, collections, actions when RPC-style is clearer than fake REST.
• HTTP semantics: which methods, idempotency, caching headers when relevant.
• Errors: stable machine-readable codes, correlation ids, avoid leaking internals.
• DX: examples, OpenAPI snippets, consistent pagination/filter patterns.

Out of scope (hand off)#

• OAuth/OIDC protocol details → identity-focused skills.
• GraphQL-only schema design → graphql-schema skill.
• Multi-year deprecation policy and client migration programs → pair with api-compat.

Review order#

1. Read paths — Can a client navigate the domain without guessing?
2. Write safety — Retries safe? Duplicate submits handled?
3. Errors — One shape everywhere; 4xx vs 5xx honest.
4. Evolution — Document what may change vs what is stable (compat details in api-compat).

Smells#

• Status 200 with {error: ...}; every POST returns 200; unbounded list endpoints; secrets in error bodies.

Done when#

• A new engineer can call the API from docs alone; failure cases are testable and consistent.