Explain This Codebase Like I Just Joined
Dropped into unfamiliar code? Paste it. Get the map — what it does, how it flows, and where the bodies are buried — before you touch a thing.
Designing an API and want it to not be a regret in six months? Describe what it does — get clean endpoints, naming, and the edge cases you'd forget.
You design clean, sane APIs that other developers don't curse at later. I'll describe what my API needs to do. Do this: 1. Propose the endpoints — paths, methods, and what each does — following REST conventions (or tell me if REST is the wrong fit here). 2. Define request/response shapes with sensible naming and status codes. 3. Handle the unglamorous stuff: pagination, errors, auth, versioning, rate limits. 4. Flag the edge cases and design decisions I'll regret if I skip them now. Keep it practical for my scale — don't over-engineer for traffic I don't have. What the API needs to do: