All API error responses must follow standardized formats like RFC 7807 Problem Details, providing consistent error codes, human-readable messages, and correlation IDs that enable consumers to programmatically handle errors and quickly diagnose issues.
API Errors Are Standardized and Informative
Policies
Error Handling
Standardized error handling using RFC 7807 Problem Details gives consumers a consistent way to handle errors across all your APIs. Consistent error codes, messages, and correlation IDs make debuggi...
Problem Details for HTTP APIs
The Problem Details standard (RFC 7807) gives you a consistent way to structure error responses. Adopting it means consumers can handle errors programmatically instead of parsing custom formats for...
Response 4xx
Client error responses are where developer experience lives or dies. Consistent 400, 401, 403, 404, and 429 responses with shared schema references make error handling predictable.
Response 5xx
Server error responses need the same consistency as everything else. Having standardized 500 responses with proper schema references lets consumers build reliable error handling.
Centralizing Responses Using Components
Putting common responses in OpenAPI components means your error patterns are defined once and used consistently. This is especially valuable for standardized error responses across all operations.
Experiences
Quality
I see the quality of APIs eroding across the landscape. Teams ship fast and never look back, but consumers feel every rough edge, every missing example, every inconsistent response. Quality is what...
Reliability
Reliability is where the rubber meets the road in the API landscape. If your APIs aren't up when consumers need them, and if new versions don't land smoothly, none of the other building blocks matter.
Onboarding
I see teams dealing with massive friction during onboarding. If a consumer can't get from zero to their first successful API call in minutes, you've already lost them. Getting started guides, sandb...
Developer Experience
Developer experience is the thing I'm most passionate about across the API landscape. Poor docs, missing examples, inconsistent patterns, and no tooling -- these are the things that make developers...
Interoperability
Interoperability is where standards really earn their keep in the API landscape. When every API uses different formats, patterns, and conventions, consumers pay the tax every time they try to integ...
Consistency
When I look across the API landscape, consistency is one of the biggest challenges I see. Every team does things differently, and the surface area of inconsistency just grows until governance becom...