DISCIPLINE 04 · API
API Development & Integration
Documented, versioned interfaces. Third-party integration, webhooks, rate limiting and caching.
DURATION
4–10 weeks
GATES
4 phases
ENGAGEMENT
Fixed or retainer
STACK
Express · JSON · OpenAPI
What you get
Six artefacts, all of them yours on delivery. No phase closes without its output.
- 01Versioned API with an OpenAPI 3.1 schema for every endpoint
- 02Third-party integrations with retry, backoff and idempotency
- 03Webhook delivery with signing, replay and a dead-letter queue
- 04Rate limiting and caching policy, documented per route
- 05Contract test suite run against the schema in CI
- 06Handover session recorded, with integration runbooks
Tooling
FRAMEWORK
Express 5 or Fastify, Zod schemas at the boundary
SPEC
OpenAPI 3.1, generated from the code, published with the API
INTEGRATION
Typed clients per provider, circuit breakers on every call
EDGE
Redis token buckets, ETag and cache-control per route
TESTING
Contract tests with Prism, Supertest for behaviour
Timeline
01
Discovery
1 WEEKConsumer inventory, existing contracts, provider audit
02
Architecture
1–2 WEEKSResource model, versioning policy, error format
03
Delivery
2–6 WEEKSEndpoints shipped per resource, schema published each week
04
Operate
ONGOINGDeprecation cycle, provider changes, quota monitoring
WHEN NOT TO USE THIS
The API exists and it is slow. Start with PERFORMANCE.
You need one endpoint added to a service we did not build. Ask; it may be an afternoon.
The integration is a no-code connector away. We will point you at it.