API Design

Use this skill to turn a vague integration idea, backend feature, or service boundary into a stable API contract that other skills can build on.

The job is not to generate pretty docs. The job is to:

• choose the right API style for the problem
• define resources, operations, inputs, outputs, and failure semantics
• make compatibility and versioning decisions explicit
• produce a contract artifact that implementation, testing, and documentation can share
• surface tradeoffs before the team hardens the wrong interface

Read references/contract-review-checklist.md and references/boundary-guide.md before handling unusual or high-risk API work.

If the user mainly needs:

• reference docs, tutorials, example-heavy guides, or doc portal setup → use api-documentation
• auth implementation or token/session configuration → use authentication-setup
• contract/integration test strategy → use backend-testing
• schema/index/storage design → use database-schema-design