Require that state-changing operations be safe to retry, either because the method is inherently idempotent or because the API supports an idempotency key that lets a consumer replay a request without creating duplicate side effects. Every API must assume that networks fail, timeouts happen, and clients will retry, so a double-submitted payment or a duplicated order is a design problem we own, not the consumer's fault. I have watched real money and real trust get lost to retries that quietly did the same thing twice. Building idempotency into the contract is what makes event-driven and asynchronous patterns dependable instead of a source of quiet corruption.
Idempotency (Design)
Strategies
APIs Follow Consistent Design Patterns
All APIs must follow consistent design patterns for naming conventions, media types, pagination, filtering, sorting, and error handling, ensuring that consumers can learn patterns once and apply th...
APIs Support Event-Driven and Asynchronous Patterns
APIs that require event-driven or asynchronous communication must follow consistent standards for webhook registration, payload formats, retry policies, and delivery guarantees, enabling reliable a...
Experiences
Reliability
If an API isn’t reliable, consumers will eventually look for alternatives. Reliability starts with the platform and infrastructure where the API is deployed, but it also depends heavily on the pace...
Consistency
Achieving consistency in the design, delivery, and maintenance of HTTP APIs across an enterprise is a significant challenge—one that often complicates API operations. Small differences, such as var...
Trust
Establish trust with API consumers will evolve and build over time, and is something that can be lost in a very short period of time. Trust will depend on other experiences like quality and reliabi...
Lifecycle
design_services Design Design
Design is where the human experience of an API is won or lost. I work design-first, shaping the paths, schema, errors, and naming in the contract before development begins, so that consistency is b...
