Require that every API produces structured, correlated logs for each request, so I want a consistent log schema, a correlation or trace identifier carried through, and clear rules about what gets captured and what never does. I care about logging because it is the record you fall back on when something breaks, when a consumer disputes what happened, or when you need to understand how your API is actually being used. Unstructured or missing logs turn every incident into an archaeology project. Just as important, I require that we never log secrets, tokens, or sensitive personal data, and that retention is deliberate, so our observability does not become its own liability.
Logging (Operations)
Strategies
API Provenance Is Maintained and Auditable
All API contracts must maintain a clear record of their provenance including reviews, certifications, pull requests, and change history, ensuring that the evolution of each API is traceable, audita...
APIs Are Observable and Monitored
All APIs must have comprehensive observability including monitoring, logging, health checks, and alerting, with defined SLIs and SLOs that ensure teams can proactively detect, diagnose, and resolve...
APIs Meet Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
All APIs must be mapped to applicable regulatory and compliance requirements including GDPR, SOC2, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA, ensuring that API designs, data handling, and operations satisfy legal obligat...
Experiences
Observability
Observability is the experience of being able to see what an API is actually doing in production. Logging, monitoring, analytics, and tracing turn an opaque running system into something teams can ...
Compliance
Compliance is the experience of meeting the legal, regulatory, and internal obligations that come with operating an API. For many teams it feels like a burden bolted on at the end, but the reality ...
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
tune Management Production
Management is the day-to-day operation of an API in production. Plans, rate limits, keys, and access all get administered here, usually through a gateway. Solid management is what lets me offer an ...
receipt_long Logging Production
Logging is the memory of an API. Every request, error, and access event is a record I can use to understand behavior, debug problems, and prove what happened. I treat logs as a first-class part of ...
