backend-best-practices
Skill1 starsChanged 6 months agoMITView on GitHub
Personal backend engineering principles covering API design and testing. Stack-agnostic. Load this skill when designing APIs, writing tests, reviewing backend code, or building new endpoints. Triggers on tasks involving REST API design, endpoint creation, pagination, HTTP status codes, input validation, integration testing, or test strategy decisions.
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Backend Best Practices
Personal backend engineering guidelines. Stack-agnostic — applies to any language or framework. Covers two domains: API Design and Testing.
When to Apply
Reference these guidelines when:
- Designing or reviewing REST API endpoints
- Deciding on response shapes, status codes, or URL structure
- Writing any kind of backend tests
- Deciding what and how to test (unit vs integration, mock strategy)
- Adding pagination to list endpoints
- Handling input validation at any layer
Domains
| Domain | Key Principles |
| API Design | Strict REST semantics, URL versioning, boundary validation, always paginate lists |
| Testing | Behavior-focused, integration-first, minimal mocking |
Quick Reference
API Design
api-rest-semantics— Use resource-based URLs and proper HTTP verbsapi-url-versioning— Version in URL path (/v1/)api-boundary-validation— Validate all input at the entry pointapi-paginate-always— All list endpoints are paginated from day one
Testing
test-behavior-not-impl— Test what the code does, not how it does ittest-integration-first— Prefer integration tests over unit teststest-minimal-mocking— Only mock at external I/O boundaries
Full Guide
For the complete expanded guide: AGENTS.md
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