REST API Designer

Design clean REST APIs and OpenAPI specs. Covers resource modeling, versioning strategies, pagination patterns, consistent error handling, and contract-first API architecture before you write a line of server code.

This skill helps you design APIs that age well. It models resources and relationships, chooses versioning strategies (URI vs header), standardizes pagination (cursor vs offset), defines consistent error envelopes and status codes, and produces an OpenAPI specification so frontend and backend teams can build against a shared contract.

When to use

Use when designing REST or GraphQL APIs, authoring OpenAPI specifications, or planning API architecture — resource modeling, versioning, pagination, and error-handling standards.

Examples

Design a resource API

Model endpoints and an OpenAPI spec

Design a REST API for a project management app with projects, tasks, and comments — include resource paths, pagination, error format, and an OpenAPI 3.1 spec

Versioning strategy

Evolve an API without breaking clients

Recommend a versioning and deprecation strategy for this public REST API and show how to introduce a breaking field change safely