Api Designer

Professional API design and review skill for REST, GraphQL, and event-driven architectures.

Install
cmdop skills install agensi-api-designer

Api Designer is a skill published by agensi that gives an agent a structured framework for designing and reviewing APIs across REST, GraphQL, and event-driven architectures. Rather than stopping at endpoint sketching, it covers resource modeling, lifecycle states, request and response shapes, and contract-first documentation — all before a line of implementation code is written.

The skill enforces standardized strategies for pagination, error handling, versioning, and naming conventions, applying industry best practices instead of leaving those decisions open to debate. It supports three main workflows: contract-first design, where the agent produces detailed specs including endpoint summaries, auth expectations, and explicit error behaviors; API auditing, where it generates a prioritized list of design risks, severity assessments, and backward compatibility findings with actionable fixes; and integration planning, where it defines authentication boundaries and transport-independent business logic.

Output is structured and high-density, giving development teams a reviewable design artifact rather than informal notes. The skill is suited to teams that need consistent, maintainable API contracts across internal and public-facing services. It does not execute code, connect to databases, or call live endpoints — it operates entirely at the design and documentation layer. There are no required environment variables and no package to install separately; it is consumed as a skill within a compatible agent runtime.

Use cases

  • Design a contract-first REST API with resource models and response shapes before writing any backend code
  • Audit an existing GraphQL API for design risks, severity issues, and backward compatibility gaps
  • Define authentication boundaries and transport-independent business logic for a new integration
  • Generate a structured API spec with explicit error codes and pagination strategies for a public-facing service
  • Review versioning strategy across multiple API endpoints to ensure predictable, maintainable contracts
  • Plan event-driven interface contracts including lifecycle states and request/response modeling

When to use it

  • When starting a new API and wanting a contract-first spec before implementation begins
  • When auditing an existing API for design consistency, backward compatibility, or risk surface
  • When a team needs standardized conventions for error handling, versioning, or pagination without manual debate
  • When planning integrations that require clearly defined auth boundaries and transport-independent logic

When not to use it

  • When the task requires connecting to a live database or executing queries against real data
  • When the goal is code generation or scaffolding an actual service implementation
  • When testing or mocking a running API endpoint is needed
  • When the transport layer is already fixed and only runtime behavior (not design) needs adjustment