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Product engineering

API engineering

API Development & Integration

An API is a promise other people build on. We design the contract first — resources, auth, errors, versioning — then build it in Node.js so the teams consuming it stop needing to ask you what a 400 means.

Two versions answering at the same time, and the date one of them endsPRD · 09
Overview

The contract is the product

Most API problems are not performance problems. They are contract problems: an endpoint that returns a different shape when a field is missing, an error body nobody can branch on, a breaking change shipped as a patch, an auth scheme that only the original author understands.

We start from the contract and work back. What resources exist, what each one returns, what every failure looks like, how a client authenticates, how a change is versioned, and what happens when the same request arrives twice. Then we build it — usually Node.js and Express, usually on Cloud Run, always with the contract written down.

One error shape
Every failure returns the same structure with a machine-readable code, so a client can branch on it instead of parsing prose.
Safe to call twice
Anything that writes takes an idempotency key, so a retry after a timeout does not create a second order, charge or upload.
Versioned on purpose
Breaking changes get a version. Additive changes do not. Consumers find out from a changelog, not from a support ticket.
What's included

What the engagement covers

  1. Resource and endpoint design, written before implementation
  2. Authentication — API keys, tokens or service-to-service identity
  3. A single error contract with machine-readable codes
  4. Idempotency, retries and rate limiting on write paths
  5. File upload endpoints with validation and object storage
  6. Reference documentation and example requests per endpoint

Technologies

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • REST
  • TypeScript
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Cloud Storage
  • Shopify Admin API
Use cases

Where this helps most

  • A shared service behind several storefronts

    One API serving more than one store, where per-store configuration, per-client auth and a stable contract all matter at once.

  • A file or document upload endpoint

    Uploads that need validation, size and type limits, private object storage and access control rather than a public bucket.

  • Exposing your own data to a partner

    A partner, an agency or an internal team needs read or write access to your commerce data on terms you control and can revoke.

Process

How we deliver

  1. Design the contract

    Resources, methods, payloads, error codes and auth are agreed in writing before any of it is built, because that is the part that is expensive to change later.

  2. Build the service

    Node.js and Express, structured logging, input validation at the edge, and the write paths made idempotent from the first commit rather than after the first duplicate.

  3. Harden it

    Rate limits, timeouts, the failure cases tested on purpose — duplicate requests, partial payloads, upstream outages — and alerts on the ones that matter.

  4. Hand it over

    Documentation with real example requests, a changelog, and the deployment pipeline in your own cloud account.

FAQ

API Development & Integration

REST or GraphQL?
REST unless there is a reason. GraphQL earns its complexity when many different clients need many different shapes of the same data; for a service with two or three known consumers it usually adds a schema layer and a caching problem in exchange for flexibility nobody uses.
How do you handle authentication?
It depends on who is calling. Server-to-server usually gets a scoped key or a cloud runtime identity; a browser client usually gets a short-lived token issued by something that can keep a secret. What we do not do is ship one shared key that every consumer holds forever.
Will we be able to maintain it?
That is the point of the contract-first order of work. The endpoints are documented, the error codes are enumerated, the write paths are idempotent and the deployment lives in your cloud account. If you want to take it in-house afterwards, nothing here is a black box.
Can you work with our existing API?
Yes. Often the useful engagement is not a rewrite but a contract audit: enumerating what the endpoints actually return today, finding where the shapes disagree, and fixing those without breaking the clients already depending on them.
Let's build

Ready to start with api development & integration?

Tell us about your store and your goals. We'll come back with a clear, honest plan and a transparent quote.